David Cox (1783-1859)
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Research by Jacqueline Arundel
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Cox, from Birmingham, was the most famous British artist of the mid-nineteenth century, with a national reputation for his fresh, lively landscape paintings in watercolour and later in oil. Joseph Bishop Pratt engraved many of his pictures, several of which have found their way into the Collection.
Cox was born on 29 April 1783 in Heath Mill Lane, Deritend, near Birmingham, the son of a blacksmith. The Birmingham Museum has the largest collection of his work anywhere in the world. Around 1798, aged fifteen, he was apprenticed to Birmingham painter, Albert Fiedler, who produced portrait miniatures and paintings for the top of snuff boxes. Following Fiedler's suicide, Cox was apprenticed (around 1800) as an assistant to a theatre scenery painter named De Maria and also to Joseph Barber (1757-1811), the leading drawing master in the city at that time. He later worked as a scenery painter at Birmingham Theatre Royal and at Astley's Theatre.
In 1804 he went to London where he took lessons from the celebrated watercolourist, John Varley (1778-1842), later moving to Dulwich in the south of London as a teacher himself, where he gathered a large group of pupils around him.
In 1805, accompanied by Charles Barber, he made the first of his many trips to Wales; his earliest dated watercolours are from that year. Throughout his lifetime he made numerous sketching tours to the home-counties, North Wales, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Devon.
From 1805 Cox exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. His pictures never sold for high prices and he earned his living chiefly as a drawing-master. Through his first pupil, Colonel the Hon H Windsor (the future Earl of Plymouth), who engaged him in 1808, Cox acquired several other aristocratic pupils. He wrote several books, including Ackermann's New Drawing Book (1809), A Series of Progressive Lessons (1811), Treatise on Landscape Painting (1813) and Progressive Lessons on Landscape (1816). The ninth and last edition of his Series of Progressive Lessons was published in 1845.
In 1808 he married Miss Mary Agg, the daughter of his landlady. His son, David Cox Jnr, was born in 1809.
In 1810 he was elected President of the Associated Artists in Water Colour. In 1812, following the demise of the Associated Artists, he was elected an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water Colour (Old Water Colour Society). He was elected a Member of the Society in 1813 and exhibited there every year, except 1815 and 1817, until his death.
In about 1814-15 he was appointed drawing-master at the Military Staff College, Farnham. With his appointment as drawing-master at Miss Croucher's Girls' School he took up residence in Hereford.
Cox made his first trip to the Continent, to Belgium and Holland, in 1826, and moved to London the following year. By this time he was quite well-known as a painter of landscapes. In 1826 he toured France, Holland and Belgium and in 1829 and 1832 returned once again to France. Between 1844 and 1856 he made annual visits to North Wales where he completed some of his finest watercolours. In 1829 he exhibited for the first time with the Birmingham Society of Artists and from 1831 with the Liverpool Academy. In 1839 two of Cox's watercolours were bought from the Old Water Colour Society Exhibition by the Marquis of Conynham for Queen Victoria.
Around 1840 Cox took up oil painting, studying under W J Müller, and exhibited two oil paintings at the Royal Academy in 1844. From 1844 until 1856 he spent his summers at Betws-y-Coed in North Wales but his health suffered following a stroke in 1853. In 1855 he was represented by watercolours at the Paris Universal Exhibition. However, by 1857 his eyesight had deteriorated. An exhibition of his work was arranged in 1858 by the Conversazione Society, Hampstead, and in 1859 a retrospective exhibition was held at the German Gallery, Bond Street, London. Cox died several months later. He was buried in Harborne, near Birmingham, where he had retired in 1841.
Rhyl Sands by David Cox – Engraving by Pratt in our Collection
oil paint on canvas, c.1854,
support: 454 x 630 mm,
frame: 637 x 817 x 94 mm.
Currently in the collection at the Tate
purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1985
Ref: T04130.
On loan to Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo, Brazil)
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See David Cox (after) engravings by Joseph Bishop Pratt
Crossing the Stream Going to the Mill Going to the Plough Rhyl Sands The Hayfield on a Breezy Day The Skirts of the Forest All the above were donated by Emma Walmsley, 1879-1945 373 Clifton Drive North, Lytham St Annes on 27 September 1943 |
Although Cox had previously made tours of Wales, it was only after settling at Harborne, near Birmingham in 1841 that he began to visit the area regularly. Betws-y-Coed was his favourite destination, reached by train via Chester, Rhyl and Conway, where he usually took a jaunting car for the rest of the journey. These visits began in 1842. He spent a day or two at Rhyl that August on his way to Betws-y-Coed and first exhibited a watercolour of Rhyl Sands at the Society of Painters in Water Colours the following year.
Cox's most celebrated paintings of Rhyl are the oils he made in 1854, at the age of seventy-one. He set out on 4 August that year with his son, his old friend, William Stone Ellis, and his housekeeper, Mrs Fowler. 'They went to Rhyl, Abergele, and on to Pentrefoilas, and afterwards to Capel Curig, not very far from Betws', his first biographer records. 'They were away some weeks on this trip, and Cox, although feeble, was able to go on with his work as usual. Later in the autumn Cox felt rather restless, regretting that he had not been to stay at dear old Betws, so he made a second journey into Wales' (N N Solly, Memoir of the Life of David Cox, 1873, reprinted 1973, p179). It is not known whether he stopped at Rhyl on this second visit.
Three oils by Cox of Rhyl Sands have survived, although it is known from sales records that he made others. Closest in style to the Tate's painting is the picture in Manchester City Art Gallery, which shares the same light palette and sketch-like handling. In the Manchester version the buildings at the right of Rhyl Sands are seen from a wider angle and given greater prominence, while the sky is more uniformly painted and less broken up by clouds. A much larger and more conventionally finished canvas, dated 1854-5, is in Birmingham City Art Gallery. Unlike the Manchester and Tate pictures, this shows Rhyl sands at or near high tide. The sea is a principal feature of the composition and the figures are concentrated on what remains of the beach at the right-hand side. The date of the Tate Gallery and Manchester paintings is not known, but the pictures may well have been the starting point for the more elaborate Birmingham canvas of 1854-5 and can therefore reasonably be associated with Cox's visits to Rhyl in 1854. Neither appears to have been sold in Cox's lifetime. Several watercolours by Cox of Rhyl Sands are known, including one, dated 1854, which corresponds approximately in composition to the Manchester and Tate paintings. It is difficult to say whether this, or possibly other watercolours, were used in any way as preparations for the two oils or whether the latter were painted directly on the spot, which is the impression they give.
Primarily a watercolourist, Cox only took up oil painting seriously around 1840 when he took lessons from W J Müller. Rhyl Sands shows him working with total mastery in the medium. According to his friend and second biographer, William Hall, Cox 'had misgivings that his method of working was not in accordance with the accepted practice - he cherished the notion that there were secrets which "the oil men" would not tell him ... He suspected that something was wrong, or at least odd and unusual in the manipulation, or in the laying on of his colours' (J T Bunce, ed. A Biography of David Cox, 1881, pp153-4). Cox's technique in the Tate and Manchester pictures, and indeed his whole approach, is certainly unique in British landscape painting of the 1850s.
Cox's most celebrated paintings of Rhyl are the oils he made in 1854, at the age of seventy-one. He set out on 4 August that year with his son, his old friend, William Stone Ellis, and his housekeeper, Mrs Fowler. 'They went to Rhyl, Abergele, and on to Pentrefoilas, and afterwards to Capel Curig, not very far from Betws', his first biographer records. 'They were away some weeks on this trip, and Cox, although feeble, was able to go on with his work as usual. Later in the autumn Cox felt rather restless, regretting that he had not been to stay at dear old Betws, so he made a second journey into Wales' (N N Solly, Memoir of the Life of David Cox, 1873, reprinted 1973, p179). It is not known whether he stopped at Rhyl on this second visit.
Three oils by Cox of Rhyl Sands have survived, although it is known from sales records that he made others. Closest in style to the Tate's painting is the picture in Manchester City Art Gallery, which shares the same light palette and sketch-like handling. In the Manchester version the buildings at the right of Rhyl Sands are seen from a wider angle and given greater prominence, while the sky is more uniformly painted and less broken up by clouds. A much larger and more conventionally finished canvas, dated 1854-5, is in Birmingham City Art Gallery. Unlike the Manchester and Tate pictures, this shows Rhyl sands at or near high tide. The sea is a principal feature of the composition and the figures are concentrated on what remains of the beach at the right-hand side. The date of the Tate Gallery and Manchester paintings is not known, but the pictures may well have been the starting point for the more elaborate Birmingham canvas of 1854-5 and can therefore reasonably be associated with Cox's visits to Rhyl in 1854. Neither appears to have been sold in Cox's lifetime. Several watercolours by Cox of Rhyl Sands are known, including one, dated 1854, which corresponds approximately in composition to the Manchester and Tate paintings. It is difficult to say whether this, or possibly other watercolours, were used in any way as preparations for the two oils or whether the latter were painted directly on the spot, which is the impression they give.
Primarily a watercolourist, Cox only took up oil painting seriously around 1840 when he took lessons from W J Müller. Rhyl Sands shows him working with total mastery in the medium. According to his friend and second biographer, William Hall, Cox 'had misgivings that his method of working was not in accordance with the accepted practice - he cherished the notion that there were secrets which "the oil men" would not tell him ... He suspected that something was wrong, or at least odd and unusual in the manipulation, or in the laying on of his colours' (J T Bunce, ed. A Biography of David Cox, 1881, pp153-4). Cox's technique in the Tate and Manchester pictures, and indeed his whole approach, is certainly unique in British landscape painting of the 1850s.
