This lyrical brush drawing of willow trees by a pool might come as a surprise for those familiar with Alexander Cozens’s blot drawings and the darker, more detailed varnished landscapes based on them. He used this style of drawing with the brush from his earliest days in Rome, when he was studying with Claude-Joseph Vernet. The latter's work was strongly influenced by Claude Lorraine, an artist whose drawings are frequently mentioned as a possible source for Cozens’s blots. The drawings that Cozens produced during his time in Italy in the 1740s demonstrate that, during these early years, he experimented with many different styles of drawings. Although his early detailed works finished in pen and ink gradually evolved into darker brown landscapes often based on blots, he continued to use brush drawing on its own, as in the example here, or employed it for the darker foregrounds of his larger compositions.

Along with clouds and the sky, trees were one of the most important elements of a landscape composition for Alexander and his son, John Robert Cozens (see cats. 6, 16, and 17). This was, of course, true for most landscape painters, but both Cozenses published illustrated guides on how to employ different types of trees to add truth and sensibility to landscapes. Alexander’s took the form of sixteen pairs of engravings in The Shape, Skeleton and Foliage, of Thirty-Two Species, of Trees for the Use of Painting, and Drawing, each numbered and with a brief title (such as Ash, Horse-Chestnut, Cedar, Elder). It was published in 1771, probably in association with one of his intended but incomplete publications, The Various Species of Landscape, &c. in Nature, and was reissued in groups of four with some copies of The New Method in 1786.¹ John Robert’s Delineations of the General Character Ramifications and Foliage of Forest Trees was first published in 1789, consisting of fourteen aquatint prints, many sets of which were issued in proof form with the outlines enhanced with washes in gray, yellow, or pale orange.² The trees dominate but fit naturally into the types of landscapes (mountainous, pastoral, coastal, Italian, and so forth), and the washes provided light or shade in different parts of the landscape and sky, re-creating different times of day or weather and thus affecting the mood of the landscape.  
 

Both Cozenses understood how the different styles of landscape composition—the character of the sky, clouds, and weather, the country or setting, and the types of figures, buildings, and especially trees—could be manipulated to create different moods or sentiments in a landscape. The parts of Alexander Cozens’s planned treatise Various Species of Landscape, &c. in Nature that were published, probably in the early 1770s, included the set of thirty-two trees but also a series of outline etchings illustrating sixteen “Various Species of Composition of Landscape, in Nature” with a separate printed sheet listing the sixteen species of “Composition” along with a list of fourteen “Objects” (water, ground, building, pastoral, and so forth) and twenty-seven “Circumstances,” such as the time of day, seasons, weather, and light in the sky or landscape.³ Around this time, he also painted a series of twenty-five monochrome wash drawings of skies that belonged to William Beckford.⁴ Twenty etchings of skies (basically cloud studies) were appended to the final publication, The New Method, and sometimes along with a reissue of the set of trees, as mentioned previously. 

The trees in this lovely drawing, A Small Pool with Willow Trees, oddly do not resemble any of the three types of willow trees in Alexander Cozens’s publication on trees. Rather, they are more similar to those in John Robert Cozens’s series, although his are shown in a stiff breeze (fig. 5.1). The explanation is likely that Alexander made this drawing while executing a group of similar works in brush and brown wash and other individual sketches of trees that explore their shapes or their effects in different types of landscape. His engraved series of more codified trees was probably created later and, like all his publications, had a rather different purpose, as they were intended for the use of other professional and amateur artists.⁵

Although he regularly exhibited and sold his works, Alexander Cozens made his living largely as a drawing master: first from 1749 to 1754 at Christ’s Hospital and later by taking rooms in town at Eton to give extra lessons to pupils there and in Bath during “the season,” and by teaching private pupils, often siblings like those of the Harcourt family or Princes William and Edward, at their homes in London or in the country.⁶ Thanks to a number of his amateur pupils, many of his works, including the present drawing, survive. At the sale after his death (Christie's, March 13, 1787) and at his son’s sale (Greenwoods, July 9–10, 1794), his pupils were avid purchasers of bundled lots of drawings, often described under the heading “Studies and Sketches” as “a suite of studies from Nature, with the names,” “a ditto, ditto, of trees,” or just “a large parcel, various.”⁷ Like the previous owner of this drawing, the pupils would mount their purchases, numbering dozens and sometimes hundreds of drawings, on individual pages in albums to use as examples to copy, for inspiration for their own work, to look through with friends, or even as a souvenir of their drawing master, as many of their notes and letters attest to their fondness for Cozens. An album of his Italian drawings was prefaced by a frontispiece drawn by a pupil that depicts figures mourning his passing and is inscribed: “A small t[ribut]e to the Memory of my much lov’d and regretted Master Alex.^r Cozens Whose gentle virtues endear’d him to all his friends: / With filial Piety to shed the tear / To add the tribute of a sigh / To look with confidence on high / Is all we mortals can do here! / S.J.G.”⁸

Like many of the other albums, the one from which this drawing was taken included sketches and blots by the pupil. This drawing was removed from the album with a number of other more finished drawings when the album was sold at Christie’s on June 15, 1982 (lots 5–10).⁹ The original owner and compiler of the album is believed to be “Miss Aynscombe, Mortlake, Surrey,” to whom two letter covers in the album were addressed, possibly written in Alexander Cozens’s hand. “Miss Aynscombe” and her father, “Lillie Aynscombe, Esq.,” were both subscribers to one of Cozens’s other publications, The Principles of Beauty (1778). The name “Ainscombe” was listed as the purchaser of one “large drawing in brown” at Alexander Cozens’s sale in 1787 (lot 125, one guinea), and although the names of buyers at his son’s 1794 sale are not recorded, the Aynscombe album contained one drawing marked “2nd Day – lot 20,” which was described as “A large parcel, various” in the sale. The purchaser at the sale was probably the father, Lillie Aynscombe (c. 1715–1791), a director of Sun Fire Office (an assurance firm) who had purchased and rebuilt the Hermitage, St. Leonard’s Hill, Clewer, near Windsor in 1750. In 1773 the house was purchased by the Duke of Gloucester, and in 1781 it was bought by William, later 3rd Earl Harcourt, who, along with his brother (the 2nd Earl), his sister Elizabeth, and his wife Mary, had studied under Alexander Cozens.¹⁰ Lillie Aynscombe moved to Mortlake (on the Thames opposite Chiswick) with his three daughters, the youngest of whom was Charlotte (1760–1799), the probable compiler of the album and also a pupil of Cozens. Her first cousin was Henry Stebbing (1752–1818) of Gray’s Inn (whose father was Chaplain in Ordinary to the King), who also studied under Cozens. Stebbing purchased works at the artist’s sales and owned several albums of his drawings and sketches, as well as one important album of early drawings by John Robert Cozens.¹¹ This group of amateur pupils who moved in court circles all experimented with Cozens’s blot method, producing their own blots and landscapes after them. However, they were also encouraged by him to set before them good examples by other artists to emulate. The present drawing was such an example, one of several finished, signed, and mounted drawings by Cozens in this album. —Kim Sloan