[Born at Norwich, May 16, 1782; went to London, 1798; gained prize for a drawing from the Society of Arts, 1800; returned to Norwich, 1806, and opened a school for drawing and design; married, 1809; published a series of etchings, 1811, and became president of the Norwich Society of Artists; published “Norman and Gothic Architecture,” 1817, and “Architectural Antiquities of Normandy,” 1822; Associate, Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1825; appointed Professor of Drawing at King’s College, London, 1834, mainly through Turner’s influence; published his “Liber Studiorum,” 1838; died July 24, 1842. EXHIBITED: Royal Academy, 1800-’06; Associated Artists, 1810, ’11; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, 1825, ’26, ’28-’39; Society of British Artists, 1838; Norwich Society of Artists, 1807-’12, ’15, ’18, ’20, ’21, ’23, ’24; Norfolk and Suffolk Institution, 1828-’33. WORKS IN PUBLIC GALLERIES: National Gallery (an oil-painting); V. and A. Museum (Water-Colours); British Museum; National Galleries of Scotland and Ireland; Norwich Castle Museum; Manchester Whitworth Institute, etc. BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: Memoir in catalogue of Norwich Art Circle’s exhibition of Cotman’s works, July 1888; Laurence Binyon’s “Crome and Cotman” (Portfolio Monograph), 1897, and “Cotman” in “Masters of English Landscape Painting” (THE STUDIO Summer Number, 1903). REPRODUCTIONS: The three works cited above, and histories of British water-colour painting by Monkhouse, Finberg, etc., already cited.] Cotman is the greatest of all the English water-colour painters born after Turner. He is the only one of them whose works can be put beside Turner’s and judged on a footing of equality. When we compare Prout, Cox, De Wint, and even Bonington, with Turner we feel that they must be judged by some less exacting standard than that which we apply to Turner. This is not the case with Cotman. He had not the width and range, the abundance and all-conquering power of Turner, but within his own limits he is every whit as unapproachable.