How did John Robert Cozens influence J.M.W. Turner’s approach to landscape painting?

John Robert Cozens played a pivotal role in the artistic development of J.M.W. Turner. Early in his career, Turner was employed to create copies and elaborations of unfinished drawings by Cozens, an experience that profoundly shaped his technical and creative growth.1

Through this engagement, Turner learned the full potential of watercolour as an expressive medium, moving beyond the strictly topographical and traditional techniques he had previously practiced. Cozens’ influence helped broaden Turner’s outlook, revealing a more poetic and imaginative approach to landscape painting. By studying Cozens’ evocative use of low-toned color combinations—specifically blues, greens, and grays—Turner began to cultivate the emphasis on atmosphere and luminosity that would eventually define his own mature, Romantic style.21