Image

Previous 1 / 1 Next

John Robert Cozens

Lake Nemi with a Distant View of Genzano (and Monte Circeo), 1778-1790

Description

Maker

Title

Lake Nemi with a Distant View of Genzano (and Monte Circeo)

Year

1778-1790

Medium

Watercolor applied with brush, graphite

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Dimensions

37.2 x 53.2 cm (14 5/8 x 20 15/16 inches)

Type

Credit

Anonymous Gift

Object Number

70.118.19

Projects & Publications

Publications

Selection II

British Watercolors and Drawings from the Museum's Collection

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Distant Climes

September 1, 2011 - June 3, 2012

In the later 18th-century John Robert Cozens began to extend the expressive possibilities of the watercolor medium, conveying an emotional response to nature. His many views of Italy, generated from studies he made on his trip there between 1776 and 1779, were extremely influential for British landscape artists of the following generations. The balance of the composition and its measured recession into space refers to the classical compositional formulae of earlier artists Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, but Cozens’s composition retains little relationship to the technique of topographical drawing found in other works in this gallery. Cozens’s watercolor washes instead emphasize the lyrical quality of diffused light and the impression of atmosphere.

Luminous Landscapes

May 27 - August 14, 2005

Between 1776 and 1779, Cozens accompanied Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824) antiquarian, connoisseur, and collector, on the Grand Tour through Switzerland to Rome. Cozens sketched continuously on the journey and throughout the next decade worked from these studies (subsequently part of the Knight collection) to produce distinctly styled watercolors, such as this one, primarily in blue grays contrasted with soft browns. There are at least nine compositions of Lake Nemi looking toward the Swiss town of Genzano, a popular subject.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Lake Nemi with a Distant View of Genzano (and Monte Circeo) with the accession number of 70.118.19. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.