David COX
Birmingham 1783 - Harborne 1859
Biography
Among the finest watercolourists in England in the first half of the 19th century, David Cox was trained as a theatrical scene painter in Birmingham before settling in London in 1804 and establishing himself as a watercolourist. Much influenced by the work of John Varley, with whom he may have briefly studied, Cox exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1805. Between 1809 and 1812 he showed his work at the Associated Artists in Watercolours, and in 1812 was admitted to the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, where he exhibited almost every year for the remainder of his long and productive career. Almost all of his sketching trips were in England and Wales, and he only rarely travelled abroad. A celebrated teacher and drawing master, Cox published several technical manuals for amateur watercolourists, including A Treatise on Landscape Painting and Effect in Water Colours, Progressive Lessons on Landscape for Young Beginners and The Young Artist’s Companion.
Cox enjoyed a successful career which lasted over half a century, exhibiting numerous watercolours and the occasional oil painting in London each year. Between 1844 and 1856 he spent part of every summer or autumn in the small village of Betws-y-Coed in the Conwy valley in North Wales, which he used as a base for sketching expeditions, sometimes in the company of younger artists such as George Price Boyce. A stroke, suffered in 1853, left him temporarily paralyzed, and although he recovered, his eyesight began to suffer and by 1857 had started to fail completely. While his output lessened considerably following his stroke, he continued to be well represented - usually with earlier works - at the annual exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in London. Shortly after his death, an account of his career described Cox as ‘pre-eminent among landscapists, and the founder of a school of landscape painting purely English, but new to England itself when he created it.’ Two large posthumous retrospective exhibitions of Cox’s work, each numbering several hundred works, were held in Liverpool in 1875 and Birmingham in 1890.
