drawing
- Museum number
- 1948,0410.9
- Description
-
Old houses in Normandy; dock to right with street running alongside, where boats are moored to quay in foreground street and row of houses with figures standing in front, striped awnings on ground floors with shuttered windows above
Watercolour with pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1782-1842
- Dimensions
-
Height: 463 millimetres
-
Width: 342 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- This watercolour is based on a plate in the second Normandy volume of 'Voyages Pittoresques dans l'ancienne France', 'Maison de la rue Damiette', in Rouen, by Bichebois and Xavier Le Prince, published in 1825. Cotman has reversed the image, and given it a new setting by a quayside, but has retained the figures which enlivened the original. There is a tracing of the lithograph on oiled paper in Norwich Castle Museum (621.B4.235.951) which Rajnai describes as 'previously attributed to Cotman' ('Normandy', p. 80). In the opinion of this compiler, it is more than likely Cotman's own work, as is the related tracing of the Fontaine de la Crosse. Rajnai notes that in 1828 Cotman exhibited 'An old house in Rouen' at the Norwich Society (166), but he does not believe it to be the present work although this may '[record] the composition'.
Ref: C.R.Grundy, A catalogue of the pictures and drawings in the collection of Frederick John Nettlefold, I, 1933, p. 122.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1975 Jul-Oct, Norwich, Castle Museum, 'Exhibition of Normandy drawings', no.L35
2002 Feb-May, BM, 'John Sell Cotman; The Poetry of Nature', no cat
- Acquisition date
- 1948
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1948,0410.9
