John Wesley Cotton was active as a painter and etcher in the Los Angeles area during the 1920s. He studied and worked in several countries, training under Eli Marsden Wilson (b. 1877) in London and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Although the dates of his study at the Art Institute are not known, beginning in 1905 Cotton exhibited at the museum for a decade, and he had a studio in Chicago in 1909. He worked in England, Belgium, and possibly France in 1911 and in Toronto from 1912 to 1917. He took up residence in southern California in 1918, and although he became associated with the Glendale area just outside of Los Angeles, he was known to travel afield for inspiration, visiting the coastal area of Laguna as well as the High Sierras in northern California. Cotton was actively involved in local art organizations both as an exhibitor and organizer, and he was elected president of the Glendale Art Association in 1928. A frequent participant in exhibitions held at the Los Angeles Museum, Cotton was given a one-man exhibition of his watercolors by the museum in 1923. He left southern California in 1930 to visit France again and then returned to the city of his birth, where he died the following year.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Obituary, Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1931, pt. 2, p. 6; November 29, 1931, pt. 3, p. 18 § Obituary, Art Digest 6 (December 15, 1931): 8 § Moore with Smith 1975, p. 55, with bibliography.