Chris Beetles Gallery

(click image to enlarge)

A Rocky Ravine

John Sell Cotman (1782-1842)

Price

£3,250

Medium

Pencil

Dimensions

12 ¾ x 8 ¼ inches

Exhibited

'Chris Beetles Summer Show', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, 2019, no 22

Early in his career, in 1800 and 1802, John Sell Cotman undertook two sketching tours of Wales, an endeavour that had become nearly obligatory during the Napoleonic Wars among British artists in search of the Sublime and the Picturesque.

A Rocky Ravine may derive from Cotman’s first tour of the country, during which he is known to have travelled into the far northwest. The terrain that it depicts is certainly reminiscent of that in both his watercolour of Pont Aberglaslyn, Beddgelert (Leeds Art Gallery) and his etching of Dolbadern Castle (Liber Studiorum: A Series of Sketches and Studies).