Biography for John Robert Cozens

Employment

Cozens was the son of a distinguished landscape artist and drawing-master, Alexander Cozens (c.1717-1786), and it may be presumed that he received lessons in drawing from his father, although few details of his life are known. He began exhibiting in London in 1767, and travelled to Italy in 1776, returning in 1779. It seems that on the 1776 trip he travelled through Switzerland, since views of that country by him are known. He made a further journey to Italy in 1782-3, but then finally came back to England, where he produced watercolours, usually based on the sketches he had made while abroad. For the last years of his life he was unable to work, presumably because of nervous breakdown, and he never recovered. He died in the care of Dr Thomas Monro (1759-1833), a doctor who specialised in mental illness, and himself an accomplished amateur draughtsman and a patron of many artists including Turner, Girtin, Hearne and Cozens himself.