a British landscape painter in watercolours, born in Russia. He taught drawing and wrote treatises on the subject, evolving a method in which imaginative drawings of landscapes could be worked up from abstract blots on paper. His son was the artist John Robert Cozens. The style used by Cozens before he finally settled in Britain can be seen in a collection of fifty-four early drawings, mostly Italian scenes, in the British Museum. Cozens lost them in Germany on his way from Rome to Britain, and they were only recovered by his son in Florence in 1776. They show him as a highly skilled draughtsman in the style of the time, with a feeling for elegant composition.
