Alexander Cozens

With Agnew's, London, by 1987,

Private Collection until,

sale, London, Christie's, 6 July 2021, lot 98,

where acquired by the present owner

Alexander Cozens holds a significant position in the development of British art as both a theorist and an innovator in imaginative landscape painting. Born in Russia to British parents, he arrived in England around 1746 after spending a number of years in Italy. By the beginning of the 1760s he had obtained the role of ‘drawings master’ at Eton College, where many of his pupils would later emerge as influential patrons of the arts. In 1760 Cozens became a member of the Society of Arts and would exhibit there, at the Free Society of Artists and finally the Royal Academy over the following two decades.

The present drawing, which incorporates both delicate pen work and subtle treatment of light and shade, is considered to date to the 1760s.¹ 

^1.For other drawings of this type see: K. Sloan, Alexander and John Robert Cozens, The Poetry of Landscape, London 1986, figs. 41, 49 and 50.