Frederick George Cotman (Ipswich 1850 - Felixstowe 1920)

This idyllic scene focuses on the quintessentially English pastime of boating as a couple idly scull about on a perfect summer’s day. Given his propensity for immortalising on canvas his native East Anglia, it is possible that Frederick George Cotman’s Boating in the English Countryside represents that region. The river depicted could, therefore, be the River Yare in Norwich. In the foreground, nestled among fluttering white flag irises, a couple seated in a row boat push off from the river bank. The lady is dressed in a fashionable, cream full length dress and sports a crimson parasol, while her companion is attired in a white shirt and navy cap with matching tie. The tranquillity of the scene and the extraordinary sense of peace and solitude is successfully evoked by the deeply recessive perspective and a deliberately uncluttered composition, allowing the raw elements of nature to communicate their inherent harmony.

A herd of cattle have ambled down to the water’s edge to slake their thirst, underlining the bucolic nature of the scene. The river itself is smooth and glassy, and attracts swallows who duck and dive, their reflections bouncing off its surface. In the distance, beyond the lush green grass behind a line of languid trees, the tower of a village church can be seen in the shade of a summer’s afternoon.

In another of his works, painted four years earlier, Cotman’s consummate skill at rendering the soft and mellow tones of the English countryside is ably demonstrated. From Shade to Sunshine employs increasingly free, almost impressionistic brush strokes and the serenity of nature is punctuated by the figure of a lady in the distance holding up her parasol to shield herself from the sun. The muted palette helps to convey the impression of shimmering heat in the same way that the vast summer sky of Boating in the English Countryside, though more polished, also does.

Cotman was the son of Henry Cotman and a nephew of the celebrated painter, John Sell Cotman (1782-1842). Known predominantly for his portraits of London society and his highly finished narrative scenes, Cotman is also remembered for his impressionistic oils and watercolours of his native East Anglia which are among his most successful work. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1868 and became a regular exhibitor of both oils and watercolours, showing at the Royal Academy from 1871 onwards. His The Death of Eucles now in the Town Hall, Ipswich, won him the gold medal in 1873.

Cotman’s early watercolours were admired and collected by prominent artistic figures of the time including Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) and G. F. Watts. In fact, Cotman collaborated with Leighton when the latter engaged him to help paint The Daphnephoria in 1876 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool). Cotman was also employed in a similar capacity by the artist, H. T. Wells.

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is known to have been an admirer of Cotman’s work and in a letter of 1888 to Walter Dowdeswell, he spoke approvingly of Cotman’s current work on exhibition, describing it as ‘very pretty.’