Lot 23: Alexander Cozens (c.1717-1786)

Buildings in a mountainous landscape signed 'Alex. Cozens.' (on the artist's original mount) and numbered '14' (upper right) pencil and brush and grey ink, on tinted paper 9 x 12 1/8 in. (22.8 x 31 cm.) PROVENANCE Anon. sale; Christie's, London, 8 July 1997, lot 2. with Spink-Leger, London. NOTES It has been suggested that this drawing relates to blot 16 in A New Method of Assisting the Invention or Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape, in which Cozens' articulates his ideas for an 'instantaneous method of bringing forth the conception of an ideal subject fully to view.' A drawing sold at Sotheby's, 20 July 1978, as 'In Calabria' shows the same view as blot 16 and would also seem to be related to the present drawing. It depicts the same flat and expansive foreground and is executed on similar paper with pencil numbering. Both drawings are stylistically similar to 'Landscape with Goat and Goatherd' in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is dated 1765. We are grateful to Dr. Kim Sloane for dating this drawing to the 1760s.