for engraving purposes about the year 1823, Cousins and his contemporaries were compelled to work on it, because the soft copper previously used for mezzotint plates did not yield a sufficient number of fine impressions to enable the method to compete commercially against line engraving, from which much larger editions were obtainable. The painter-like quality which distinguished the 18th-century mezzotints on copper was wanting in his later works, because the hardness of the steel on which they were engraved impaired freedom of execution and richness of tone, and so enhanced the labour of scraping that he accelerated the work by stipple, etching the details instead of scraping them out of the “ground” in the manner of his predecessors. To this “mixed style,” previously used by Richard Earlom on copper, Cousins added heavy roulette and rocking-tool textures, tending to fortify the darks, when he found that the “burr” even on steel failed to yield enough fine impressions to meet the demand. The effect of his prints in this method after Reynolds and Millais was mechanical and out of harmony with the picturesque technique of these painters, but the phenomenal popularity which Cousins gained for his works at least kept alive and in favour a form of mezzotint engraving during a critical phase of its history. Abraham Raimbach, the line engraver, dated the decline of his own art in England from the appearance in 1837 of Cousins’s print (in the “mixed style”) after Landseer’s “Bolton Abbey.” Such plates as “Miss Peel,” after Lawrence (published in 1833); “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” after Landseer (1857); “The Order of Release” and “The First Minuet,” after Millais (1856 and 1868); “The Strawberry Girl” and “Lavinia, Countess Spencer,” after Reynolds; and “Miss Rich,” after Hogarth (1873–1877), represent various stages of Cousins’s mixed method. It reached its final development in the plates after Millais’s “Cherry Ripe” and “Pomona,” published in 1881 and 1882, when the invention of coating copper-plates with a film of steel to make them yield larger editions led to the revival of pure mezzotint on copper, which has since rendered obsolete the steel plate and the mixed style which it fostered. The fine draughtsmanship of Cousins was as apparent in his prints as in his original lead-pencil portraits exhibited in London in 1882. In 1885 he was elected a full member of the Royal Academy, to which institution he later gave in trust £15,000 to provide annuities for superannuated artists who had not been so successful as himself. One of the most important figures in the history of British engraving, he died in London, unmarried, on the 7th of May 1887.
See George Pycroft, M.R.C.S.E., Memoir of Samuel Cousins, R.A., Member of the Legion of Honour (published for private circulation by E. E. Leggatt, London, 1899); Algernon Graves, Catalogue of the Works of Samuel Cousins, R.A. (published by H. Graves and Co., London, 1888); and Alfred Whitman, Samuel Cousins (published by George Bell & Sons, London, 1904), which contains a catalogue, good illustrations, and much detail useful to the collector and dealer. (G. P. R.)
COUSTOU, the name of a famous family of French sculptors.
Nicolas Coustou (1658–1733) was the son of a wood-carver at Lyons, where he was born. At eighteen he removed to Paris, to study under C. A. Coysevox, his mother’s brother, who presided over the recently-established Academy of Painting and Sculpture; and at three-and-twenty he gained the Colbert prize, which entitled him to four years’ education at the French Academy at Rome. He afterwards became rector and chancellor of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. From the year 1700 he was a most active collaborator with Coysevox at the palaces of Marly and Versailles. He was remarkable for his facility; and though he was specially influenced by Michelangelo and Algardi, his numerous works are among the most typical specimens of his age now extant. The most famous are “La Seine et la Marne,” “La Saône,” the “Berger Chasseur” in the gardens of the Tuileries, the bas-relief “Le Passage du Rhin” in the Louvre, and the “Descent from the Cross” placed behind the choir altar of Notre Dame at Paris.
His younger brother, Guillaume Coustou (1677–1746), was a sculptor of still greater merit. He also gained the Colbert prize; but refusing to submit to the rules of the Academy, he soon left it, and for some time wandered houseless through the streets of Rome. At length he was befriended by the sculptor Legros, under whom he studied for some time. Returning to Paris, he was in 1704 admitted into the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, of which he afterwards became director; and, like his brother, he was employed by Louis XIV. His finest works are the famous group of the “Horse Tamers,” originally at Marly, now in the Champs Elysées at Paris, the colossal group “The Ocean and the Mediterranean” at Marly, the bronze “Rhône” which formed part of the statue of Louis XIV. at Lyons, and the sculptures at the entrance of the Hôtel des Invalides. Of these latter, the bas-relief representing Louis XIV. mounted and accompanied by Justice and Prudence was destroyed during the Revolution, but was restored in 1815 by Pierre Cartellier from Coustou’s model; the bronze figures of Mars and Minerva, on either side of the doorway, were not interfered with.
Another Guillaume Coustou (1716–1777), the son of Nicolas, also studied at Rome, as winner of the Colbert prize. While to a great extent a copyist of his predecessors, he was much affected by the bad taste of his time, and produced little or nothing of permanent value.
See Louis Gougenot, Éloge de M. Coustou le jeune (1903); Arsène Houssaye, Histoire de l’art français au XVIIIe siècle (1860); Lady Dilke, Gazette des beaux-arts, vol. xxv. (1901) (2 articles).
COUTANCES, WALTER OF (d. 1207), bishop of Lincoln and archbishop of Rouen, commenced his career in the chancery of Henry II., was elected bishop of Lincoln in 1182, and in 1184 obtained, with the king’s help, the see of Rouen. Throughout his career he was much employed in diplomatic and administrative duties. He started with Richard I. for the Third Crusade, but was sent back from Messina to investigate the charges which the barons and the official class had brought against the chancellor, William Longchamp. There was no love lost between the two; and they were popularly supposed to be rivals for the see of Canterbury. The archbishop of Rouen sided with the barons and John, and sanctioned Longchamp’s deposition—a step which was technically warranted by the powers which Richard had given, but by no means calculated to protect the interests of the crown. The Great Council now recognized the archbishop as chief justiciar, and he remained at the head of the government till 1193, when he was replaced by Hubert Walter. The archbishop did good service in the negotiations for Richard’s release, but subsequently quarrelled with his master and laid Normandy under an interdict, because the border stronghold of Château Gaillard in the Vexin had been built on his land without his consent. After Richard’s death the archbishop accepted John as the lawful heir of Normandy and consecrated him as duke. But his personal inclinations leaned to Arthur of Brittany, whom he was with difficulty dissuaded from supporting. The archbishop accepted the French conquest of Normandy with equanimity (1204), although he kept to his old allegiance while the issue of the struggle was in doubt. He did not long survive the conquest, and his later history is a blank.
See W. Stubbs’s editions of Benedictus Abbas, Hoveden and Diceto (Rolls series); R. Howlett’s edition of “William of Newburgh” and “Richard of Devizes” in Chronicles, &c., of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II. and Richard I. (Rolls series). See also the preface to the third volume of Stubbs’s Hoveden, pp. lix.-xcviii.; J. H. Round’s Commune of London, and the French poem on Guillaume le Maréchal (ed. P. Meyer, Soc. de l’Histoire de France). (H. W. C. D.)
COUTANCES, a town of north-western France, capital of an arrondissement of the department of Manche, 7 m. E. of the English Channel and 58 m. S. of Cherbourg on the Western railway. Pop. (1906) 6089. Coutances is beautifully situated on the right bank of the Soulle on a granitic eminence crowned by the celebrated cathedral of Notre-Dame. The date of this church has been much disputed, but while traces of Romanesque architecture survive, the building is, in the main, Gothic in style and dates from the first half of the 13th century. The slender turrets massed round the western towers and the octagonal central tower, which forms a lantern within, are conspicuous features of the church. In the interior, which comprises the
