drawing
- Museum number
- 1902,0514.26
- Description
-
Cader Idris; view on a mountainside
Watercolour
- Production date
- 1782-1842
- Dimensions
-
Height: 203 millimetres
-
Width: 300 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- Cotman travelled beneath the shadow of Cader Idris during the two tours of Wales he made as a young man in 1800 and 1802. During the 1830s, the great bulk of the mountain with its flat peak returned to haunt a number of Cotman's late paintings, worked as much from imagination as from drawings made on the spot. Two similar compositions, showing a lake in the foreground, are in Norwich Castle Museum and the National Museum of Wales (NCM 209.217.947 and no.3029, see Moore, p. 115, cat.122). Also compare with 1902,0514.28.
See the 'Turner and his Contemporaries: The Hickman Bacon Watercolour Collection' catalogue from Abbot Hall Gallery, 12 January -14 April, 2012 for another watercolour of Cader Idris by Cotman, dating c. 1830-35 and further discussion regarding Cotman's watercolours of Cader Idris. On the left are two small figures, which the catalogue suggests to be Cotman and Munn, taking in their first view of the Cader Idris. Once titled as 'Down Scenary', until Shanes drew comparisions in 2001, between this and 1902,0514.26 in the British Museum collection to confirm that the view was of Cader Idris. 'Both of primarily experimental, based on memory and imagination, and generic, intended to evoke ideas of grandeur and isolation rather any specific place' (p.94). It is likey that Cotman was influenced by Turner's 'Pituresque Views in England and Wales' which was at the time being reproduced in engravings and exhibited in 1829 and 1833.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1888 July, Norwich Art Circle, 9th Exhibition, 'Drawings by John Sell Cotman', no.179
1891 Royal Academy, 'Winter Exhibition of Old Masters', no.63
- Acquisition date
- 1902
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1902,0514.26