Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

You remember how admirably the Lay of the Last Minstrel opens with a description of such a hall, filled with
knights, and squires, and pages… I tried, while standing by these walls, to conjure up the same pictures to my
imagination, but it was impossible; so desolate and altered was every thing around, and so effectually was the place
of baronial assemblage converted into a granary. 92
In addition to his own volumes Turner commissioned the artist John Sell Cotman (1782-1842),
who had been acting as drawing master to his daughters in Norwich, to make a tour of Normandy
for a separate publication. Cotman seems to have had rather a thin time of it never managing,
Turner’s wife noted, to finish anything before the party moved relentlessly on. The Abbé de la
Rue gave a discouraging report to Douce of
Mr Coteman qui parcourt la province pour dessiner des antiquites normandes… cet homme va bien vite pour
produire quelque chose de bon… Mr Coteman ne parle pas francois … cet homme ne me paroit pas avoir
l’instruction, c’est un artist pour la main, mais n’a nullement l’esprit d’un antiquaire. [Mr Cotman who is travelling
through the county to draw Norman antiquities… this man goes too fast to produce anything good…Mr Cotman
speaks no French.. [he] appears to me to know nothing, he has an artist’s skill but none of the mentality of an
antiquary.] 93
Cotman’s Antiquities of Normandy, for which Turner wrote the text, was published in
1822 and despite the Abbé’s reservations has always been an admired and sought-after work.
Cotman combined his artistic skill with architectural detail to create images that exactly met the
appetite for accuracy with atmosphere that characterised contemporary antiquarianism. For those
who required more technical information Britton’s Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, which
followed the model of his Specimens of Gothic Architecture, began to appear four years later,
with plates drawn from sketches made on the spot by A C Pugin and his pupils. Britton, who was
prevented by illness from visiting Normandy himself, compiled a text from the work of several
authors and from information from various antiquarian friends including Turner.
The book was not a commercial success, partly because Britton got into financial
difficulties and was sued by Pugin and the engravers John and Henry Le Keux, after which all
four of them lost the rights to the work. Even without this complicating factor, however, it would
92 Turner, Tour in Normandy 2, p.206.
93 Douce/de la Rue letters f108, 25 July, 1817.
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