Miles Edmund Cotman

Miles Edmund Cotman (5 February 181023 January 1858) was an English artist of the Norwich School of painters, the eldest son of John Sell Cotman.

Life

Cotman was born on 5 February 1810, the son of the artist John Sell Cotman and Ann Miles. Taught to paint by his father, he first exhibited with the Norwich Society at the age of thirteen, and by the time of the society's closure in 1833 had shown sixty works. Some of his early watercolours were continental scenes, probably based on prints, or on sketches by his father's friend, W.H. Herriott.

When his father left to take up a post teaching at King's College School in London, Cotman took over his practice as a drawing-master in Norwich. Once the family home in St Martin's Plain in Norwich had been sold, however, he moved to London to assist his father, while his younger brother, John Joseph, who had accompanied his father to the capital, returned to take over the family's teaching practice. He stood in for his father during illnesses and absences, and succeeded to his post following his death in 1842.

His watercolours followed the style of his father's more brightly coloured works of the late 1820s and early 1830s. John Sell Cotman thought his son had a "hard dry manner", although his style gradually loosened, He was especially fond of painting shipping scenes, sometimes based on sketches made aboard a small boat owned by the Cotman family on trips along the coast to the Thames estuary and the River Medway.