The celebrated watercolourist and engraver John Sell Cotman (1782–1842), one of the leading lights of the Norwich School of painting, was born in Norwich, the son of a wealthy silk merchant. Desperate to seek his artistic fortune, he moved to London at the tender age of 16, where he worked as a printer and engraver. London at the turn of the century had a vibrant watercolour community, and it was during this time that he was introduced to J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Girtin. It was under Girtin that Cotman developed the vibrant and detailed watercolour style that he is known for today.

He exhibited a selection of works at the Royal Academy in 1800, at the age of 18, showing a fine hand for English watercolour landscapes, that rivalled the works of Turner and many other contemporary artists. Around 1806 Cotman returned to Norwich, where he became a teaching instructor in the fine arts, and briefly retired from the business of watercolour. He was appointed president to the Norwich Society of Artists in 1811, and it was around this time that he began steady work in engraving.

From 1812 to 1823 he lived on the coast near Great Yarmouth, and travelled across England and abroad to Normandy to study the land and sea, producing a significant number of published volumes of etchings and engravings. Though he made a lucrative career out of this, it was watercolour that continued to call to him, and he began to exhibit again slowly in London, until he moved there formally in 1834 when he was appointed as Master of Landscape Drawing at King’s College School. It was in this role that he trained a young Dante-Gabriel Rossetti, as well as his own two sons Miles Edmund Cotman and John Joseph Cotman, who went on to become painters of stature. He died in London in 1842.

His works can be found in collections at the British Museum, Tate Britain, and the V&A; Newton ‘Cotman’ watercolours bear his name to this day.