Cley Church, Norfolk

Unlike academic, London-based painters who romanticized the English countryside, John Cotman and other members of the Norwich School painted landscapes in their immediate surroundings. This drawing of Saint Margaret’s in the village of Cley-next-the-Sea exhibits Cotman’s heightened attention to perspective and architectural detail as opposed to vegetation and atmospheric effects. Drawings such as this one allowed Cotman to translate his renderings of historic architecture into printed form. Between 1810 and 1822, over 400 prints from his own sketches were published in travel books, including Excursions through the County of Norfolk, which features a print made from this drawing.