Early life '' (near Rome), from his first Italian visit The son of the Russian-born drawing master and watercolourist
Alexander Cozens (c. 1717–1786), John Robert Cozens was born in London. His mother Charlotte was a daughter of
John Pine (1690–1756), an engraver with a print shop in
St Martin's Lane, who was a friend of
William Hogarth, who included a portrait of him as the "fat friar" in
The Gate of Calais, one of his prints. Alexander was a fashionable teacher of watercolour, "for whom theorising and codifying were as natural as breathing", who had developed theories on depicting landscapes, including his famous (or notorious) advocacy of building compositions up from random blots of ink, earning him the derisive epithet of the "Blotmaster". Alexander wrote several books on the theory and practice of landscape watercolours, and John Robert tended to be referred to in the contemporary art world by terms such as "the younger Cozens". John Robert studied under his father and his mature work shows his father's influence in several important respects, including the very muted colour values, and the readiness to abandon balanced, harmonized and idealized compositions in the tradition of
Claude Lorrain and
Nicolas Poussin. He began to exhibit some early drawings (as watercolours were usually then called) with the
Society of Artists in 1767, when he was only 15. An album of drawings in the
National Library of Wales includes sketches of the dramatic rock formations of the
Peak district made in 1772 on a trip to
Matlock, Derbyshire. His uncle
Robert Edge Pine was a portrait painter based in
Bath, Somerset (as was another painter-uncle Simon Pine, who died in 1772), and between about 1772 and 1776 Cozens also lived there "with or near his uncle", who later moved to America. In 1773 Cozens's name appears on a set of eight etched prints
Eight Views of the most Elegant Scenes of and in Bath, sold individually for a guinea each, uncoloured; many copies were then hand-coloured by dealers or buyers. Most are townscapes of the new Georgian town, but include some views of the distant city with a landscape foreground, but without much sign of his individual style. In 1776 he exhibited the large
oil painting,
A Landscape with Hannibal in His March Over the Alps, Showing to His Army the Fertile Plains of Italy (now lost) at the
Royal Academy in London. This painting was the only
oil that Cozens exhibited at the Academy and perhaps influenced
J. M. W. Turner's painting of a similar subject exhibited in 1812. A small near-monochrome watercolour roundel, 26 cm across, by Cozens of the subject was one of a group of five roundels. Andrew Wilton had noted that although they are thought to date from before Cozens's foreign travels, it "displays in remarkably complete form the style [Cozens] is supposed to have evolved specifically in response to his experience of the Alps". Cozens stood for election as an Associate of the Academy the same year, but received no votes. He never stood again, nor submitted other works (watercolours were then not accepted).
The two European trips Between 1776 and 1779 he travelled to
Switzerland and
Italy, where he drew Alpine and north Italian views. He travelled with the wealthy and highly cultivated
Richard Payne Knight (then 26) as far as Rome, where Cozens remained until 1779, when he returned to London. Most of the sketches made on this trip were of Swiss scenes; they are now "widely scattered", with 24 in the
British Museum. They show his style developing, rather than complete. and
Genzano,
Italy'' c. 1777. Back in London the very wealthy author and collector
William Beckford, a friend, pupil and patron of Alexander Cozens, paid Cozens to turn his sketches into watercolours, as did other collectors. In 1782 he made his second visit to Italy, as part of the large entourage of Beckford (then 22), spending time at
Naples from July, where both Cozens and Beckford had bouts of
malaria. They then stayed with
Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to the
Kingdom of Naples at his villa in
Portici near the city, and (initially) Hamilton's wife Catherine, who died in August 1782. In September Beckford sailed for home, with Cozens remaining in Italy. The Welsh painter
Thomas Jones, then part of the same circle in Naples, noted that this left Cozens "once more a free agent and loosed from the shackles of fantastic folly and caprice". His works show scenes from as far south as
Sicily, though Martin Hardie did not think that he actually went there, suggesting that several images of
Mount Etna and other Sicilian sites were based on works by others.
Back in London In 1783 he returned to England, soon after which he fell out with Beckford, who complained in letters to Alexander about the late delivery of promised paintings. It is on his paintings of Continental subjects that his fame largely rests, and these were the bulk of his output; many subjects were repeated in different versions. The subjects repeated most often include
Lake Albano,
Lake Nemi, the
Villa d'Este and other views at
Tivoli, and the Greek temples at
Paestum. Many, very likely most, of his watercolours were evidently produced back in England, based on the sketch drawings he had made abroad; most are not dated. Scholarship can compare the various versions, and the progress of the image from the original sketch made in Italy; a lot essay by Sotheby's shows the original sketch, a tracing of it by Cozens, one of his watercolour paintings, and a copy by Turner. A sweeping Alpine view,
Pays de Valais, is based on a sketch of 1776 from his first tour, now in the
Soane Museum, which on the verso has a list of "eight patrons who had ordered finished watercolours of the subject". Known surviving versions are in the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Yale, Leeds, Birmingham (2), Agnew's (in 1994), and
Stourhead, the only one whose
provenance can be traced back to a name on the list. He only left a few paintings of English scenes, though six versions are known of
London from Greenwich Hill; two are dated with 1791 and 1792, though by the 1790s he seems to have been producing fewer paintings in general. One unusually large watercolour (642 x 920 mm, dated 1790) of
The Chasm at Delphi was based third-hand on a sketch made by
James "Athenian" Stuart, itself made "under the direction of a traveller who had recently visited the spot". There are a number of surviving sketchbooks from the second visit; the "Beaumont Album" has 215 drawings and belonged to
Sir George Beaumont and his descendants from around the time of Cozens's death until 1967. It is now in the
Yale Center for British Art. Seven sketchbooks are now in the
Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.
Later years Few details are known about his life in the years between his return in 1783 and his breakdown in 1794, essentially his thirties. He may have taught, as most watercolourists did, as well as working up his sketches into paintings. He was probably the "Mr Cozens" paid as drawing master to the Princes
Ernest (born 1771) and
Augustus (born 1773) in Royal Household records of 1787–88. His father had been "Instructor in Drawing to the Young Princes" since 1781, but had died in 1786. In 1789 he published
Delineations of the General Character, Ramifications and Foliage of Forest Trees (or
The General Character, Delineation and Foliage of Trees), a set of fourteen prints of individual trees, each 24.3 x 31.7 cm, intended mainly for studying artists; there is no title page nor any text. The prints follow in the footsteps of his father, the drawing master at
Eton College, who had published
The Shape Skeleton and Foliage of Thirty Two Species of Trees in 1771 with a similar purpose. John Robert's prints are very technically accomplished, apparently combining
aquatint and
soft-ground etching.
Mental collapse In 1794, at the age of 42 and three years before he died, he suffered a complete
nervous breakdown, from which never recovered, and was taken into the care of
Dr Thomas Monro, chief physician of the
Bethlem Royal Hospital asylum, who was also a considerable collector and patron. Cozens was never (contrary to some claims in the past) in the Bethlem Hospital himself; this was to be avoided if other solutions could be afforded. Monro had access to Cozens's sketches, and paid the young Girtin and Turner (both born in 1775) to copy and work up Cozens's sketches at Monro's home at
Adelphi Terrace in the evenings. Turner was paid 3 shillings and sixpence a night. Cozens was married, with two children of "about five or six" at the time of his mental breakdown. An appeal was made to the
Royal Academy for a grant for his family, signed by artists including
Richard Cosway,
James Northcote and
Joseph Farington, and 10 guineas was granted. The Academy also contributed to a subscription for his medical costs, some £70 or £80 a year, organized by Payne Knight and Beaumont, with some 15 subscribers, and Farington administering. Beckford did not contribute. Cozens died in London in December 1797. ==Public collections==