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John Joseph Cotman

JOHN JOSEPH COTMAN
1814-1878

The second son of John Sell Cotman (1782-1842), John Joseph was the most original of the Cotman children. In 1824 the family moved from great Yarmouth, where his father practiced as a drawing master, to the family's home town of Norwich, and there John Joseph became apprenticed to his uncle, a haberdasher. 1834 he went to London to help his father at king's College, where his father was drawing master, and to study in the British Museum and the National Gallery. In 1835 he returned to help with the family teaching practice in the more sheltered atmosphere of Norwich,
while his elder brother, the more practical Miles Edmund Cotman took his place as their father's assistant. From 1849 to 1851 he lectured at the Thorpe Institute and also at Yarmouth.