John Robert Cozens

John Robert Cozens was an English painter of romantic watercolour landscapes, nearly all of Continental scenes. His career was brief and his production relatively low, but he had an enormous influence on later English watercolourists. Cozens painted striking watercolours which influenced Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner, who together made copies of many of them when young, paid by Dr Monro, and has been described as "perhaps the most poetic of English painters". Despite using a "very limited palette, usually blues, greys, and greens, [and] the simplest of compositions ... there is a grandeur and simplicity about his best work which appeals directly to the heart". John Constable described Cozens as "all poetry", and "the greatest genius that ever touched landscape."