Lot #8: Haunting Moya Cozens British Impressionist Watercolour Mid-Century Modern Painting Original Frame

Moya Cozens (1920-1990). Born in England, she grew up from 1926 to 1932 in Melbourne Australia, before returning to Great Britain. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she specialized in portrait painting. Cozens moved to and lived in Jamaica from early 1956 though the end of 1958. She had been hired as the first fully trained graduate teacher at the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts, which had been established in 1950. Many watercolors seem to have been drawn en plein air and attest to the influence Jamaica had on her. Simultaneously she produced prints, screen prints mostly, which were intended for sale to the tourism industry in Jamaica. She is said to have had several exhibitions while in Jamaica. Cozens also carved and printed color linocuts. While her silkscreens tend towards to commercial, in her watercolors and white line color linocuts, Moya Cozens developed a personal style and rendered a vision of affection and admiration for a culture she was not born into. Both the people of Jamaica, women, and children mostly, but also many animals, animate her oeuvre. The date of her death is sometimes erroneously indicated as 1970. This is rather unlikely, as she is said to have taught art at the Croydon High School in the 1970s and 1980s, before retiring in Denton, Sussex. Research into her work and life is being conducted by Catherine Davis from Stevenage or Hitchin UK, who can be reached on LinkedIn.