Alexander Cozens

Born in Russia (his father was shipbuilder to Czar Peter the Great), Cozens was educated in London and studied art in Italy between 1746 and 1748. He was drawing master at Christ?s Hospital (a London charity school for orphans) from 1750 to 1754, and also tutored private pupils both at Eton, and in their homes (George Beaumont, William Beckford and the children of the first Earl Harcourt among them). As a drawing master Cozens specialized in landscape, and loved systems, rules and methods. He wrote several manuals, including An Essay to Facilitate the Inventing of Landskips (1759); The Shape, Skeleton and Foliage of Thirty-two Species of Trees (1771) and A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (1785-6). Cozens devised a system whereby different kinds of landscape could be achieved through the ink blot loose sketching with a brush loaded with ink suggesting different motifs. Most of his work is of such imagined landscape compositions with vague titles.