drawing
- Museum number
- 1902,0514.175
- Description
-
Alençon Castle, tracing; round tower in centre with gardens in front, orchard to right and road to left with horse and rider, houses of town in distance to left
Graphite
- Production date
- 1782-1842
- Dimensions
-
Height: 229 millimetres
-
Width: 302 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- This is a tracing of a composition which exists in two versions. One, in watercolour, dated 1823, is in Norwich Castle Museum. A sepia version, now at Yale, though dated 1820, was perhaps the work entitled Castle at Alencon exhibited at the Norwich Society in 1823, since one reference in a Norwich newspaper mentions this subject in relation to other 'sketches executed in sepia. Given the dating of these two works, the tracing may possibly have been used in the preparation of the later, watercolour version. A copy by Cotmans pupil Mary Anne Turner differs in some small respects, but enough to suggest that Cotman may have produced another, slightly different, version.
This is one of three subjects drawn by Cotman on 16 August 1820, the one day he spent in Alençon on the third of his trips to Normandy. For a full discussion of Cotmans Alençon pictures, see M. Rajnai, John Sell Cotman; drawings of Normandy in Norwich Castle Museum, 1975, pp.45-6.
Reeve's manuscript catalogue, p. 45, no. 99, notes, "Same subject as watercolour drawing in the possession of Mr F.J.Keith who purchased it at the Revd Titlow's sale in 1871". This is the work now in Norwich.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1902
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1902,0514.175
