Cozens, JOHN ROBERT

Cozens, JOHN ROBERT, water-colour painter, was born in England in 1752. He was instructed by his father, Alexander Cozens, also known as an artist in water-colours, who was one of the two natural sons of Peter the Great, by a woman from Deptford who accompanied the Czar to Russia. In 1776 he visited Switzerland, with R. Payne Knight, and in 1783 returned from an extended tour in Italy with William Beckford, who commissioned many of the washed drawings which he then executed. Among his English subjects are some fine studies of trees made in Windsor Forest. In 1794 the artist's mind gave way, and in his later days he was befriended by Sir George Beaumont and Dr Munro. The date of his death has been usually stated as 1799, but there is reason to believe that he was alive after 1801. The great qualities of his art have commanded the enthusiasm of brother-painters. Turner and Girtin copied his drawings, and Constable pronounced that 'his works were all poetry,' that he was 'the greatest genius that ever touched landscape.' He to some extent extended the very limited colour-scheme of previous painters in the medium, introducing greater force and variety of tinting; and he substituted for their topographical treatment of landscape a rendering more imaginative and more perceptive of the delicacies of atmospheric effect. In composition, his works are singularly large and harmonious, and they evince an especial sympathy for nature in her moods of placid sublimity. There is a fine series of his works in the British Museum Print Room.