James Pattison Cockburn

James Pattison Cockburn studied at Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Training under Paul Sandby is recorded. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are Quebec City. Residence is recorded at New York City and Woolwich. Work by James Pattison Cockburn is recorded in the collections of National Gallery of Canada, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Smithsonian American Art Museum, State Library of New South Wales and Royal Ontario Museum.

• Honorific Prefix — Major-General • Name — James Pattison Cockburn • Born — 18 March 1779 • Died — 18 March 1847 • Place of death — Woolwich, London, England • Illustration — York, capital of Upper Canada, showing Court House and Jail, August 1829

Cockburn had a long military career and retired with the rank of Major-General. Throughout his time in the army, which took him to many parts of the world, he sketched and produced a steady flow of travel books which he illustrated himself. They include A Voyage to Cádiz and Gibraltar, with 30 coloured plates, published in 1815; Swiss Scenery, with 62 plates, in 1820; The Route of the Simplon, in 1822; The Valley of Aosta, in 1823 and Pompeii Illustrated, in folio, in 1827. Cockburn spent two periods stationed in Quebec City, Canada, during his military career. The first, from November 1822 to June 1823, produced little artwork that has survived. His second posting, lasting from April 1826 to August 1832, proved to be artistically prolific. Many works from this "mature" period cover subjects from both Upper Canada and Lower Canada with Quebec City and Niagara Falls as the subjects of his finest work. He is renowned for his precise, faithful representations of Quebec City, which capture the spirit of the city and have lived on as invalubale records of the early nineteenth century in Quebec and Canada. Cockburn finished his career as the director of the laboratory of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich where he died. His body of work is large and has yet to be reconstructed in a comprehensive manner for more in-depth study. • Illustration — View of entrance to the Tête-de-Pont Barracks (Fort Frontenac), Kingston, Ontario, ca. 1830. • Illustration — "Passenger Pigeon Net, St. Anne's, Lower Canada". Watercolour and pen and black and brown ink on wove paper (1829).

At the Cowley Abbott Spring Live Auction: Select Masterworks of Canadian and International Art, lot 40, Cockburn's The Lower Town and King's Wharf from the Upper Town, Quebec, (1833), 15.75 × 22 in, estimate: CA$10,000 - CA$15,000, sold for $133,250 (including Buyer's Premium).

The canonical record carries the following identifying particulars.

* * Attribution: *