FJK 032
Cozens John Robert (British, London 1752–1797 London)
The Burning River of Hell
ca. 1776
11 27/64 × 15 1/8 in. (290 × 384 mm)
Medium
Pen and grey ink, brush, dark-grey ink and wash, watercolor and traces of pencil on paper, framing outline in pen and black ink
Inscription in lead pencil, lower center: Luce rapidus flammis ambit torrentibus amnis/Tartareus Phelgethon, torquetque sonatatia saxa
Origin
Private Collection
Sale, Sotheby’s, London, May 17, 1933, no. 11
Walker’s Galleries Ltd., London
Private Collection, Great Britain (acquired on December 8, 1943; Mr. Cumberledge?)
Sale, Sotheby’s, London, April 8, 1998, no. 50
Jan Krugier Collection, Monaco, JK 5559
Jan Krugier Foundation
Bibliography
OPPE A.P., Alexander and John Robert Cozens, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1952, p. 126.
SLOAN K., Alexander and John Robert Cozens. The Poetry of Landscape, New Haven, 1986, p. 103.
Exhibitions
Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Linie, Licht und Schatten. Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 1999, p. 130, no. 58, color ill. p. 131.
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, The Timeless Eye. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection, 1999, p. 146, no. 66, color ill. p. 147.
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Miradas sin Tiempo. Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Coleccion Jan y Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2000, p. 200, no. 84, color ill. p. 201.
Notes
The Latin inscription is taken from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book VI. Aeneas travelled to the underworld and saw, ‘a river sweeping round with a current of white-hot flames and boulders that spun and roared; this was Tartarean Phlegethon, the Bruning River of Hell’. Although it has frequently been said that Cozens’s watercolours are Virgilian in atmosphere, no other work by him can be so directly related to a Virgil text. Indeed Oppé (op. cit., p. 135) felt that he was not ‘steeped in Virgil’ but that ‘Virgil and he were steeped in the Italian ... landscape.
[…] The present watercolour belongs to a group of five similar works of dramatic, sometimes subterranean subjects. The remaining four are roundels, one in the collection of Eton College, two in the Tate Gallery (Oppé collection), and the fourth roundel (Private Collection, USA) depicts Hannibal showing his army the fertile plains of Italy. […]
Sotheby’s, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Drawings and Watercolours, London April 1998
Request for information/loan
The Jan Krugier Foundation is devoted to increasing the impact of the collection of drawings through regular loans to major exhibitions. Loan applications should include a complete presentation of the project.