english watercolors of the river thames by david cox and cornelius varley

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English Watercolors of the River Thames by David Cox and Cornelius Varley Author(s): Timothy Wilcox Source: Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, Vol. 66 (2007), pp. 20-29 Published by: Princeton University Art Museum Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442626 . Accessed: 28/06/2014 09:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Princeton University Art Museum is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.238.114.31 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 09:11:06 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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English Watercolors of the River Thames by David Cox and Cornelius VarleyAuthor(s): Timothy WilcoxSource: Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, Vol. 66 (2007), pp. 20-29Published by: Princeton University Art MuseumStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20442626 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 09:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Princeton University Art Museum is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toRecord of the Art Museum, Princeton University.

http://www.jstor.org

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Figure i. David Cox (British, I783-i859). A View of Westminster Bridge Looking touwards Lambeth Palace and Westminster Abbey, ca. i 8i . Watercolor on wove paper, 27.0 x 68.o cm. Princeton University Art Museum, museum purchase, Surdna Fund (2005-I 7).

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English Watercolors of the River Thames by

David Cox and Cornelius Varley

TIMOTHY WILCOX

English watercolor painting has not traveled especially well. With a few notable exceptions, the most extensive collec tions outside the British Isles have been put together in the former colonies of Canada and Australia. But with the rise of J. M. W Turner as a global phenomenon and an appar ently inexhaustible appetite for his work on the part of both scholars and the public, some of the interest and enthusiasm he has generated is being extended to his contemporaries. John Constable, whose name is ever yoked with Turner's as the other colossus of the age, was-in this, as in so many other respects-the exception in working very little in watercolor. For the first fifty years of the nineteenth cen tury, almost every other landscape painter of note founded his career (the gender bias is significant; very few were women) on watercolor painting. Not without reason did the connoisseur and future patron of the National Gallery, Sir George Beaumont, lament, prophetically, in I802 that "all the rising and promising men give themselves up to it."I

The recent acquisition by the Princeton University Art Museum of two outstanding watercolors by David Cox and Cornelius Varley is notable, then, as a reflection of an expanding desire to know more of the visual and profes sional context in which Turner moved. At the same time, individually, and as a highly complementary pair, these specific sheets provide openings onto the complex cultural environment in which such artists lived and worked.

A View of Westminster Bridge Looking towards Lambeth Palace and Westminster Abbey by David Cox (fig. i) and A View Overlooking the Thames at Richmond by Cornelius Varley (fig. 2) have many things in common. Both were painted by members of the Society of Painters in Water colours, the artist-run cooperative founded in i 804 that to this day organizes Britain's second-oldest annual exhibi tion after the Royal Academy.2 Curiously, however, neither

work figured on the walls of its gallery, although both are large in scale and have many of the characteristics of the "exhibition watercolor."3 The focus of both watercolors is the River Thames, England's "national river," and there are compelling reasons for this. The group of watercolorists laying claim to public attention-and public patronage through their exhibitions relied on more than sheer scale to convey their ambition; the choice of a subject such as

the River Thames was guaranteed to arouse in the viewer a wide range of associations, historical, poetic, and social as well as visual, that would enrich his or her experience of the work. In making an overt appeal to the intellectual qualities of such representations, these painters also wished to elevate themselves above the "mere topography" that was practiced in such profusion by their amateur pupils and that threatened to reduce all landscape painting, in the famous phrase of the Royal Academy's professor of paint ing Henry Fuselh, to "the tame dehneation of a given spot."4

Cox's A View of Westminster Bridge is one of the grand est, and best preserved, of all the watercolors known from the artist's early years. It can be dated about 1811, when Cox was president of the Associated Artists in Watercolour, created in i8o8 as a rival to the older society, but which collapsed in 1812. Cox, the son of a blacksmith, was born in Birmingham in I783. He came to London in I804, initially to work as a scene painter, but soon found more congenial employment among the growing band of water colorists. He took lessons from John Varley (I778-I842), Cornelius's elder brother, toward whom all the talented newcomers gravitated. An able technician and sympathetic teacher,Varley had the distinction of being closely associ ated with Thomas Girtin (1775-1802). After the death of the only watercolorist who could seriously rival Turner, it was Varley who transmitted his methods to a generation of younger painters, which included Copley Fielding (1787 i 855), Peter DeWint (I784-I 849), William Henry Hunt (I 790-I 864),William Turner "of Oxford" (I 789-I 862), and others who would constitute the backbone of the Water colour Society for almost fifty years to come.5 Turner and Girtin had been employed by the physician Dr. Thomas Monro to copy drawings and watercolors in his collection and those of his friends.6 Today, their joint copies of the landscapes of John Robert Cozens (1752-1797) are the

most often encountered, but Monro also owned substantial numbers of drawings by Canaletto, which appealed espe cially to Girtin. Although Girtin's extant copies are chiefly ofVenetian scenes, he was evidently impressed with Cana letto's treatment of the Thames in subjects such as The Thames and Westminster Bridgefrom the North (fig. 3). These provided the most powerful frame of reference when Girtin

2I

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Figure 3. Giovanni Antonio

Canaletto (Italian, 1697-I768).

The Thames and Westminster

_ '~'- Bridgefrom the North, ca. 1750. Pen and ink and wash over

black chalk, 34.5 x 73.8 cm.

British Museum, London

~{. (i868-3-28-3o6).

4 -' -F- mFigure 4. Thomas Girtin (British, 1775-1802). View of the Louvre and the Pont des Tuileries from the Pont Neuf, i802. Watercolor

.K - and graphite over soft-ground

_

_ E B _ |

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~etching, I6.5 X 43.8 cm.The

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (PD 5-i983).

came to make his own series of views of the center of Paris in I80I-2 (fig. 4).7 That he was still working on his series of prints of these scenes at the time of his death in November I802, at the tragically early age of twenty seven, gave them a talismanic quality for the generation that followed. All these later artists painted their own homage to Girtin's Paris in some way or other. DeWint's A View of Westminster Hall, Abbey &c, from the Bridge was shown at the first exhibition of the Associated Artists in i8o8 (fig. 5). Cox was not then a member, but he could hardly have failed to view the show; while DeWint per petuated Girtin's somber monochrome, Cox determined to execute his reworking of the same subject in a more brilliant, naturalistic palette.The entire trajectory of Girtin's

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legacy, actively leavening the highly dynamic watercolor economy, could be told from the comparison of these two works alone.

A significant number of Cox's earliest surviving works depict the London townscape around Westminster.8 Dur ing these years, British troops were active on battlefields all over Europe. Westminster Abbey became more than ever a national symbol, its Gothic style held to be peculiarly English; the French contribution to the development of Gothic was notably underplayed on these shores! Between the abbey and the river stood the seat of the English parliament, an institution that was equally a source of national pride as despots ran amok on the Continent. In the Princeton watercolor, Lambeth Palace, seat of the

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Figure 5. Peter DeWint

v (British, I784-I849).

A View of Westminster Hall, -? .Abbey &c,from the Bridge,

i8o8.Watercolor, 35.5 x

80.4 cm. Victoria and

Albert Museum, London A (P61-I92I).

archbishop of Canterbury, and by extension of the Protes tant church, frames the view to the left, while on the extreme right Cox has crammed part of Inigo Jones's Ban queting House; in reality, the building stands a few hundred yards further east, but its inclusion adds to the almost overwhelming sense of richness, historic as well as architectural, this scene can offer. When William Wordsworth recorded his response to the

scene, he was, in fact, en route to France. He began his son net, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, I802," with the line, "Earth has not anything to show more fair." In his case, this was not the outpouring of a simple patriot; initially, Wordsworth had supported the French Revolution, and when he returned from his trip to Paris in I 802, it was to criticize the English for their small-minded

mendacity.Wordsworth's poem was first published in i 807, then appeared in a collected edition in I8I5; however apposite the poem was to Cox's view, the painter probably did not know the poem when he painted the scene.9

This stretch of the river continued to interest Cox for many years to come. Although from i 8o8 he was living in rural south London, near Dulwich Common, he came fre quently to sketch beside the Thames. The reach beyond the bridge, between Vauxhall, on the left, southern bank and Millbank on the north, was a favorite haunt of John Varley, who often took his pupils there. For Cox, the open skies, the broad spaces, and the fresh breezes around this part of the river were a constant attraction. In many of his

rapidly executed studies of water, boats, and clouds, the location is almost incidental, and the buildings hardly im pinge on the conscious mind.There is, however, one grand architectural vista to complement the earlier one, a water color perhaps exhibited as Westminster,from Vauxhall at the

Watercolour Society in I829 (fig. 6). The greatly enlarged sky and subde yet restrained use of color to supply a unifying tonality provide a telling contrast to the I8II watercolor and seem to justify the opinion of later generations who saw in Cox one of the precursors of the Impressionists.

CorneliusVarley's career was one of the most eclectic of all nineteenth-century artists. Indeed, it might be truer to say that his prime vocation was as a scientist, for it was only

Figure 6. David Cox. Westminster,from Vauxhall.Watercolor and body color, 21.0 x 34.0 cm. Private collection.

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for a few brief years, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, that painting became his primary occupation. Cornelius was ten when his father died; Richard Varley's profession is not known, but at the age of twelve the boy was apprenticed to his uncle, Samuel, a watchmaker in Lon don.'0 Samuel was an active member of various scientific societies, where he rubbed shoulders with professionals and with the more enlightened aristocrats who gave them patronage. Cornelius showed remarkable promise, espe cially with a microscope he exhibited at one of his uncle's meetings. By i8oo, however, Cornelius's older brother, John, was beginning to achieve recognition as a watercolor painter, and Cornelius decided to follow in his footsteps. In his Narrative, the brief autobiography penned much later in his long life, Cornelius claimed that "by sketching from nature [I] taught myself.""

In I 804, having exhibited only a handful of works at the Royal Academy, Cornehus became, with his brother, one of the ten founding members of the Society of Painters in Watercolours. At the first exhibition, in April i 805, when other members of the Society were showing elaborate, highly finished compositions, designed to rival oil painting and challenge the establishment kudos of the Royal Acad emy, Cornelius showed mainly unfinished sketches made during a tour of Wales and perhaps even graphite draw ings. For him, scrupulous honesty was a solid-enough principle on which to found a new aesthetic, yet he would not reject entirely the classical rhetoric of much conven tional landscape painting. In I8o6 Varley's submissions included works entitled Solitude (accompanied by a quota tion-unascribed-from naturalist Gilbert White) and another listed as A Composition. Although already aged twenty-five, he enrolled in January I 807 at the Royal Academy Schools; he was the only one of the Watercolour Society's landscape painters to see any potential benefit in the intensive study of the human figure that formed the Academy's core curriculum.'2 The rewards became appar ent the following year when Varley became one of the founding members of a sketching club that gave itself the grand title The Society for Epic and Pastoral Design. Over the next six years, with the Chalon brothers and fellow

Watercolour Society members Francis Stevens and William Turner "of Oxford," he was a regular creator of imagina

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tive drawings in monochrome wash, based on a fragment of poetry chosen by the host of each evening's session.'3 Toward the end of the following decade, when the Water colour Society (despite having reformed to allow the inclusion of oil paintings, some of them occasionally by Cornelius) was struggling for survival, he was one of the few who, year by year, upheld the principle of poetic land scape with a series of compositions accompanied by verses from living poets Walter Scott and Samuel Rogers as well as the immensely popular Augustan James Thomson.

By this time,Varley had patented his Graphic Telescope and had become an active member of the Society of Arts.'4 Despite his evident ability to balance the varying claims on his time and talents, he chose not to continue in membership with the Watercolour Society when it reverted to its original focus on the single medium in 1821. Not that he became any less active; the two pictures that had become his average annual tally simply appeared on the walls of the Royal Academy instead. When the Society of British Artists (another artist-led initiative intended to break the virtual stranglehold of the Royal Academy) held its first exhibition in i826, Varley sent a picture, perhaps to signal his support.

The extended sketch of Varley's artistic activities above may serve as a prelude to a discussion of his A View Over

looking the Thames at Richmond (fig. 2). The watercolor is neither inscribed nor dated, but it has been associated with a group of sketches offered atVarley's studio sale on July i5, I875. Lot 13 consisted of five sketches, some of them appar ently inscribed Richmond and bearing the date 1826. In common with most of the lots, this one was not sold and was bought in, but it was presumably sold later by his heirs and entered the collection of J. D. Freeman. It was sold again by Spink in London in I982, with a note stating that "by family tradition" (which family is unclear) the work came from the I875 sale. For a work of this size and degree of elaboration to be included in a bundle of sketches is not entirely likely, and it may be that this tradition is false, unless the watercolor's identity was masked by a more generic title such as A Composition (lots I 58 and 181, both bought in) or possibly Evening (lot 140, bought in).

Another substantial unfinished watercolor, inscribed Richmond and with a glimpse of the bridge in the distance,

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Figure 7. Cornelius Varley. Richmond, Surrey, ca. I 826. Graphite and watercolor, 30.8 x 47.0 cm. Birmingham

Museums & Art Gallery (1953P419).

is in the Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery (fig. 7). Somewhat smaller than the Princeton sheet, but with many affinities in the loose handling and layered modeling of the trees, this very likely was one of the sketches offered in I875 among lot 13. It reappeared at Cornelius's next

major showing at the Squire Gallery in London in I937. The contents of this commercial show were supplied largely by Cornelius's grandson from the residue of the I875 sale. Richmond, Surrey was bought by the Midlands collector J. Leslie Wright, who bequeathed it to Birming ham in I953.

Although impressive in scale, A View Overlooking the Thames at Richmond was not exhibited byVarley, nor does it relate to any exhibited work, as Richmond never appears among the recorded titles of paintings shown in London or elsewhere. It is likely to be a "lay-in" (to bor row a term more often associated with oil painting) for an exhibition picture, a tonal underpainting that would usually receive a great deal of refined work in order to be brought to a state of "finish." Comparative examples in Varley's work of this period are rare, but one useful benchmark can

be found in the watercolor of Kerry Castle in Ireland, dated I 830, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (fig. 8); this is in all probability the workVarley showed at the Royal

Academy in that year (no. 5 I4). The watercolor has unusu ally fine brushwork, vivid coloring, and a bold sweeping cloud effect in the sky-all elements that could, poten tially, have been added to the Richmond view, had Varley continued with it.

Despite being unresolved, Richmond remains one of the most striking survivals from Varley's later career of a work that fully maintains the ambition of the Watercolour Society's founders. All of Cornelius Varley's finished imag inative watercolors are now lost, and this sheet stands as a virtually unique indication of his desire to create a sense of idealistic contemplation, not through the manipulation of stock motifs, but through the transfiguration of an actual place. In this,Varley was squaring up to the greatest living landscape painter of the age, J. M. W Turner.

In I 803, the year Cornelius exhibited his first watercolor at the Royal Academy, the one landscape hailed as "with out comparison" was Turner's monumental The Festival of

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Figure 8. Cornelius Varley. Ruins of Kerry Castle, County Kerry, Ireland (exhibited at the Royal Academy I830). Watercolor, 37.1 x 54.1 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London (P65-I924).

the Opening of the Vintage, Macon (fig. 9). l5 Although Turner had passed through Macon on his journey across France the previous year, the topography is based entirely on earlier sketches he had made of the view from Richmond Hill. In the same way that Claude's paintings were believed to in corporate actual views of the Roman Campagna, admired by the ancients,Turner has set his homage to Claude in the spot most celebrated by modern lovers of landscape: Rich mond. The preeminence of this location was established from the time of its description in Thomson's The Seasons. "[T]his glorious view / Calmly magnificent" offered not only a vast distant prospect, which included the royal palace of Windsor (not actually visible in Turner's or Varley's views), but also the river Thames, on whose banks stood Britain's capital city (some ten miles to the east, away to the right of the image depicted). Turner himself quoted from this passage ofThomson's poem when he next exhibited a view of Richmond, in I 8 I 9, discussed below.

Following Thomson, the view from Richmond Hill was praised more often in poetry than any other British land scape. In the fifty years or so preceding Varley's depiction (assuming it to have been painted around the time of the dated sketches), at least eight poems were set there.'6 The grandest and most elaborate may well have been Reverend Thomas Maurice's Richmond Hill, an entire volume, pub lished in I807:

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On this proud brow,-this terrace of delight Vhere truth surpasses fiction's boldestflight . . . Hills rich in verdure,forests black with shade The crowded city, and sequester'd glade; ... Burst in a flood ofglory on the view Still bright, still varied, andforever new.'7

Turner returned to the subject in a painting exhibited at the Royal Academy in I 8 I 9, England: Richmond Hill on the

Prince Regent's Birthday, a work sometimes regarded as a bid for the royal patronage that had until then eluded him.i8 The idea that this place could stand in for the nation is perhaps less preposterous than proposing the royal anniver sary as the climax of the entire calendar. Shortly afterward, Turner acknowledged the appeal of the view to artists, amateur as well as professional, in a watercolor that was en graved by Edward Goodall for the Literary Souvenir of I 826 (one of a new genre of gift books, designed to catch the Christmas market in advance of the year designated; fig. io). Alongside Turner's view appeared verses by the volume's editor, Alaric Watts, whose first stanza evokes both the season and time of day captured inVarley's painting:

Let poets rave ofArno's stream, And painters of the winding Rhine; I will not ask a lovelier dream,

A sweeter scene,fair Thames, than thine;

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Figure 9.J. M.W.Turner (British, 1775-i85i). The Festival of the Opening of the Vintage, Macon. Oil on canvas, 146.0 x 237.5 cm. Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, Sheffield, England.

As, 'neath a summer sun's decline, Thou "wanderest at thine own sweet will," Reflectingfrom thy face divine Theflower-wreathed brow of RICHMOND HILL.

Watts's misquotation of a line from the very Wordsworth poem already referred to, "the river glideth at his own sweet will," is a curious coincidence serving to underline the cultural affinities between the two watercolors by Varley and Cox.

Even though it is a "work in progress," Varley's view achieves an ideal balance of prosaic description and poetic fancy. Reference to other drawings and engravings of the period reveals the care he took with the topography.'9 In the center foreground are the roofs of the Petersham almshouses and to the right a house known as Nightin gale Lodge (fig. i i). Framed by trees on the far side of the river is Marble Hill House, built for Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II, in the I720S and a fine, compact example of English Palladianism. At the time of Varley's view, it had recently been sold to Captain Jonathan Peel, brother of future Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel.20 Turner, and many other artists who depicted the scene, typically made a point of showing leisured Londoners admiring the view; sometimes they share the slope with the cattle that grazed there, as an indication that the space

was not yetfully urban (a couple are roughly indicated in Varley's drawing).Varley's figures are certainly not modern; instead, they seem to evoke a pair of reclining nymphs, albeit ones who have situated themselves in a prime posi tion for taking in the scenery. Arcadians they may be, but

with a distinctly contemporary taste for the beauties of nature. On the brow of the hill behind them stood a house well-known among artists and others as the residence of the first president of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds. He even painted the view himself, in one of his rare landscapes (fig. 12). In his eyes, the spot assumes the timeless tranquillity to which many English landscape gardens aspired. His painting, now in the Tate Gallery, was included in the last of the artist's studio sales in i82i and

twice engraved, soVarley could well have known it in one

of these versions.2' Reynolds had died in 1792, to be succeeded as president

by the American-born Benjamin West. It was partly on

account of their insistence on the promotion of "grand manner" history painting that the Royal Academy would not admit to membership artists who worked solely in watercolor, a stance that contributed to the group seces sion and creation of the Watercolour Society in i 804.When the Academy revised its rules in I8I0, agreeing to admit draftsmen to the rank of associate, as a rearguard action, it

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Figure i I. Cornelius Varley. A View Overlooking the Thames at Richmond, detail.

was definitely a case of too little, too late.22 The haunting legacy of Girtin and the dynamic wizardry of Turner had changed the face of watercolor painting in Britain forever. The early work of David Cox, of which A View

of Westminster Bridge Looking towards Lambeth Palace and WestminsterAbbey is such an outstanding example, depends heavily on Girtin.Yet by the end of his career-having outlived Turner, who died in I85 I-Cox was proclaimed the greatest living landscape painter, in a field where for decades Turner had provided the paradigm. In his later years, CorneliusVarley was quite content to exhibit draw ings he had made at the beginning of the century, with titles such as Tintern Abbey as in 1803 (Society of British Artists I869, no. 833). Propelled initially by Girtin, he too had aspired to Turnerian grandeur, nowhere more so than in the I820S, a moment perfectly typified by his A View Overlooking the Thames at Richmond.

These watercolors by Cox andVarley, with the careers of their two distinguished artists, exemplify the complex negotiations undertaken by all landscape painters in the early nineteenth century, navigating between the twin poles of Turner and Girtin.They demonstrate not only the capa bilities of the individual painters, but some of the range and ambition of English watercolor painting as a whole.

Figure 12. Sir Joshua Reynolds (British I723-I792). The Thames

from Richmond Hill, I788. Oil on canvas, 69.8 x 90.8 cm. Tate Collection, London (No5635).

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NOTES

i. Letter to Rev. William Gilpin, January 1802. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. misc. c.389, fols. 40-41, quoted in Greg Smith, "Watercolourists

andWatercolours at the Royal Academy, 1780-183 6," in Art on the Line: The

Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780-1836, ed. David H. Solkin

(New Haven, 2001), 192. 2. See Timothy Wile ox, The Triumph ofWatercolour:The Early Years of the Royal

Watercolour Society, 1805?55 (London, 2005). 3. The term gained currency in the 1980s through the exhibition by Jane

Bayard, Works of Splendor and Imagination: The Exhibition Watercolor, 1770-1870

(New Haven, 1981). Its relevance has been more recently challenged, not

entirely justly, by Smith, "Watercolourists and Watercolours at the Royal

Academy, 1780-1836," 195.

4. Henry Fuseli, Lectures on Painting, by the Royal Academicians: Barry, Opie, and

Fuseli, ed. Ralph N.Wornum (London, 1848), 449.

5. John Lewis Roget, A History of the "Old Water-Colour Society," vol. 1 (1891;

repr. Woodbridge, England, 1972), 312-14. 6. Ibid., vol. 1, 77-82. See also Andrew Wilton, "The 'Monro School' Ques

tion: Some Answers," Turner Studies 4, no. 2 (1984): 8-23.

7. Susan Morris, Thomas Girtin, 1775-1802 (New Haven, 1986), 25-27, 47-48. 8. Stephen Wildman, David Cox, 1783?1859, exh. cat., Birmingham Museums

& Art Gallery (London, 1983), cat. nos. 1, 7-9. An early notebook of Cox's

contained references to a watercolor "view of Lambeth and London" sold

to a Mr. Everitt in Birmingham for five guineas in November 1811 and a

"coloured drawing of Westminster Bridge" that sold for two guineas in July 1812. Although Cox's prices at this period were still modest, it seems

unlikely that either could relate to a work of the size and quality of the

Princeton watercolor. In 1813 Cox exhibited Westminster Bridge, from Lam

beth and in 1814, Westminster Abbey, from Lambeth, both subjects that one

would expect to depict the view looking from the other side of the bridge.

See N. Neal Solly, Memoir of the Life of David Cox (I873; repr. London,

1973), 24, 3I8. 9. William Wordsworth, Poems, vol. i, ed. John 0. Hayden (Harmondsworth,

1977), 574-75 and 993-94.

io. Timothy Wilcox, "The Art of Cornelius Varley," in Cornelius Varley: The Art

of Observation, exh. cat., Lowell Libson Ltd. (London, 2005), 9-I8, and John

Varley Jeffery, "The Varley Family: Engineers and Artists," Notes and Records

of the Royal Society of London si (I997): 263-79. i I. Wilcox, "The Art of Cornelius Varley," I0.

I2. S. C. Hutchison, "The Royal Academy Schools, 1768-I 830," Walpole Society,

vol. 38 (I960-62): I63.

13. Hesketh Hubbard, "The Society for the Study of Epic and Pastoral Design,"

Old Watercolour Society's Club 24 (1946): I9-33.

I4. See Huon Mallalieu, "Varley the Optician," in Cornelius Varley, 25-3 I .

I 5. Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings ofj. M. W Turner, rev. ed. (New

Haven, I984), 36-37, cat. no. 47.

i6. Robert A. Aubin, Topographical Poetry in XVIIth-Century England (New

York, I936).

17. Thomas Maurice, Richmond Hill:A Descriptive and Historical Poem (London,

I807), 42.

i8. Butlin and Joll, The Paintings ofj. M. WTurner, I06-7, cat. no. I40.

I9. Bamber Gascoigne, Images of Richmond:A Survey of the Topographical Prints of

Richmond in Surrey up to the Year 1900 (Richmond-upon-Thames, I978), 71-73.

20. Marble Hill House, Twickenham:A Short Account of Its History and Architecture

(London, I982), 4-I1.

2I. Nicholas Penny, ed., Reynolds, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts (London,

I986), 270-7I, cat. no. 99.

22. Greg Smith, The Emergence of the Professional Watercolourist: Contentions and

Alliances in the Artistic Domain, 176o-1824 (Aldershot, England, 2002), 3 I.

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