Survival in the British Art World, 1800-1840: The Art and Career of John Sell Cotman

John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) was one of the most talented yet most beleaguered artists to have worked in nineteenth-century Britain. The son of a Norwich hairdresser, Cotman began his artistic career as a sixteen-year-old in London where he entered a crowded, competitive and highly commercialised art world in which survival required artists to consider - and choose wisely - their unique selling point. Throughout the subsequent four decades of his career as landscape artist, Cotman would alternately fulfil, transcend and struggle with the implications of this requirement, producing an astonishing body of oil paintings, watercolours and etchings as he moved repeatedly between Norfolk, London and other British regions as well as Normandy. The bulk of these works (over 2,000 items) now form a central feature of the Norwich Castle Museum's art collections.

This collaborative doctoral project is intended to increase awareness and understanding of Cotman and his art, through a digitisation project in which selected works in the Museum's collections will be researched and interpreted anew for online and in-gallery displays, a small in-focus exhibition curated by the student and based on their PhD research, and a PhD thesis in which new light will be cast upon Cotman's art and career, last considered in depth in 1982.

Existing studies have laid out the general details of Cotman's biography, oeuvre and reception. However, a substantial amount of Cotman's works and correspondence remains unpublished. Equally, studies have only occasionally engaged directly with Cotman's artworks as works of art, focusing instead on the circumstances of their production. In particular, Cotman has usually been understood in relation to 'the Norwich School' of artists, whose real emergence and coherence has been a matter of debate. By situating one artist and his work within this regional art centre and the other locations in which he worked, it is hoped that this project will offer new perspectives on the character of regional, metropolitan and national art worlds, as well as the forms of cultural entrepreneurship and professional identity, during this period. The project will therefore draw upon, and contribute to, the body of recent scholarship in which both regional cultural life (especially in Norwich, which had only recently been eclipsed as Britain's second city) and metropolitan cultural practice have been re-examined. Cotman's art and career relate to a range of issues which have been the focus of much recent literature on nineteenth-century British art and culture, concerning regional and national identities, professional and amateur artistic status, new artistic techniques (including innovation in watercolour drawing, then emerging as a modern art form with distinct possibilities and pitfalls), and artistic entrepreneurship and exhibition cultures.

This collaborative doctoral project has three main aims:
1. to offer new knowledge and interpretations of Cotman's artistic practice and career
2. to situate Cotman's practice within its aesthetic, cultural and historical contexts, particularly in relation to the variety of regional, national and international locations in which he worked
3. to make an intellectually-rigorous, critically-aware and effective contribution to our understanding of the history of British art during an important period in its development.
The project's main objectives are therefore:
1. to develop an original first-hand engagement with a range of published and unpublished artworks and archival material relating to Cotman
2. to analyse Cotman's practice in light of scholarship concerning relevant aesthetic, cultural and historical trends during this period, particularly as they relate to the locations within which he worked
3. to reconsider Cotman's practice throughout his career in light of current schol

This collaborative doctorate will make a significant and lasting contribution to the interpretation of an internationally-outstanding aspect of the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery's collections, the collection of over 2,000 artworks produced by the Norwich-born artist John Sell Cotman. To date, the basic data concerning these items have been documented and entered into the Museum's online database by curators as a core aspect of their responsibilities and alongside their ongoing digitisation of the Museum's holdings. As yet, less than 50% of these artworks have been digitised and the catalogue lacks the 'statements of significance' (or short texts) with which staff and public interpretation of selected key works can be enabled.

In researching 50 of these key works, digitising them and producing innovative and accessible interpretative texts to accompany them, the student will have a substantial impact on knowledge about this aspect of the Museum's collections. This knowledge will be publicly disseminated through the online catalogue (currently estimated to receive around 50,000 unique visits per month), electronic displays within the Museum's art galleries (redisplay and rehang currently being planned and due to reopen in 2012), the student's in-focus exhibition (organised in the final year of their PhD), and any public talks and publications which arise from their research. The online catalogue has encouraged significantly greater public engagement with the Museum's collections during the last 3 years, evident from requests for information, photographs and research visits as well as visitor feedback, and it is hoped that the digital interpretation of Cotman's works will also encourage continued and increased academic engagement, from beyond the two partner institutions, with these works and others in the Museum's collections. In turn, Museum staff will be able to use the student's contributions to this digitisation project as a resource for informing future displays, interpretative events and educational activities.

As the major museum in Norfolk, the Museum has a special role to play in shaping and engaging with regional perceptions of identity, history and culture - yet its collections are also nationally-renowned (particularly in the field of British art) and a significant proportion of its visitors come from across the UK and overseas. By offering vivid and accessible reinterpretations of works by a Norfolk artist who worked across regional, national and international sites, the collaborative research project and its intended Museum outcomes will enhance the Museum's profile and impact. As a result, this research project will contribute to the Museum's broader role in stimulating the region's visitor economy.

Through its public-facing outcomes, the project will also contribute to UEA's community engagement agenda which is actively pursued through Community University Engagement East (CUE East), one of six higher education national Beacons for Public Engagement aimed at assisting both staff and students to engage with the public and providing a climate within which universities are better able to improve quality of life, support social and economic regeneration and inculcate civic values. CUE East provides support, encouragement and training for UEA staff and students, an infrastructure dedicated to building capacity at all levels, funds, facilities and community liaison for developing new activities, and rewards and incentives for individual engagement practitioners. The School of World Art Studies and Museology most recently worked closely with CUE East in developing, funding and holding an ambitious series of free and accessible public events about their research interests by School faculty, in Norwich city centre, for local residents and visitors. The collaborative doctoral project's public outcomes ar