(1752-1797) English landscape painter, a watercolorist. His Romantic views of Europe, painted on tours in the 1770s and 1780s, influenced both Thomas Girtin and Turner. He was the son of the painter Alexander Cozens.
He accompanied Richard Payne Knight, 1776, and William Beckford, 1782–83, on the Grand Tour as professional draftsman, going via Switzerland to Italy. Paintings of Swiss mountain scenery, possibly owing something to the Swiss watercolorist Ducros, and of the country round Rome, where he stayed, 1778–79, were romantic in vision rather than topographical, spacious in effect and harmoniously conceived in a limited range of tones. There is a collection in the British Museum. He became insane 1794 and was cared for by Dr Monro, the patron of art, Cozens’s drawings in his collection being a major influence on the young Girtin and Turner, employed by Monro in copying them. Constable not only asserted that Cozens was “the greatest genius who ever touched landscape” and “all poetry”, but remarked how much more famous he would have been if he had practiced oil as well as watercolor.