A. J. Finberg

“ The beautiful simplicity and naïveté of the man’s character, the mean circumstances in which his life was cast, the fortitude, industry, and manliness with which he triumphed over his difficulties—these things explain much that seems at first sight futile in his art and colour even his worst failures with a glow of purely human sympathy. ”

“ But through it all one can catch the echoes of Cox’s own convictions. He has realised very clearly the need that the colour and light and shade of a drawing should be emotionally expressive as well as merely explanatory. Cox was no realist in the shallow sense of the term; he was as convinced an idealist as Reynolds himself, and as firmly opposed to the scientific and abstract conception of art as a merely optical exercise divorced from the primary feelings and emotions of humanity.
After thirteen years’ residence in Hereford, Cox determined to return to London. ”

“ To-day a teacher of art does little more than criticise the work which his pupils produce. In Cox’s time a drawing-master had to go from one pupil’s house to another, making a display of his own accomplishments. ”

“ Cox writes: “The principal art of Landscape Painting consists in conveying to the mind the most forcible effect which can be produced from the various classes of scenery.... This is the grand principle upon which pictorial excellence hinges, as many pleasing objects, the combination of which renders a piece perfect, are frequently passed over by an observer because the whole of the composition is not under the influence of a suitable effect. ”

“ On the contrary, the structures of greatness and antiquity should be marked by a character of awful sublimity, suited to the dignity of the subjects, indenting on the mind a reverential and permanent impression, and giving at once a corresponding and unequivocal grandeur to the picture. Much depends on the classification of the objects, which should wear a magnificent uniformity, and much on the colouring, the tones of which should be deep and impressive. ”

“ He deals only with essentials, with those dumb longings and primary passions that form the obscure groundwork of life itself. His place is certainly among the great figures of English art, beside Constable and Cozens and Girtin, as one of the seers and prophets of the tenderness and strength of the nation’s character. ”

“ During the period of the artist’s early married life he had many difficulties to contend with. The long war with France had depressed trade, made living dear, and people generally had little to spare for articles of luxury. But Cox worked away steadily at his art, forming himself on the best models. This was the time when Turner was painting what many artists consider are among the finest landscapes that have ever been produced by an English artist. ”

“ He sat down before the pupil and “showed how it was done,” and the professional success of the teacher depended largely upon the admiration he could excite in his pupils or their parents and guardians at the apparent ease and rapidity with which he could manufacture plausible imitations of works of art. That the habit of working to excite the astonishment of the ignorant and uncritical tended to bring something of commonness into Cox’s style can hardly be doubted. ”

“ Solly says, “Cox’s wants were few and simple; his ambition took no flight beyond the constant aim of his life, namely, to excel in the practice of his art. The inexhaustible wealth of nature, his genius, and the love of his family and friends, sufficed to fill his cup with more happiness than is allotted to most men ”

“ The removal to Hereford, where the artist remained for thirteen years, is rightly regarded by Cox’s biographers as an important event in his life. He went there penniless, having indeed to borrow £40 to defray the expenses of his removal, and he left there with at least a thousand pounds to the good. The money, it is true, was amassed slowly and with difficulty, and it was earned rather by incessant teaching than by original artistic productivity. ”

“ And the works of his old age—his most eloquent and self-subsistent productions, i.e., the works of Cox that stand least in need of a commentary—these lose nothing of their compelling power from the spectator’s consciousness of the difficulties through which the artist’s spirit had to struggle towards self-realisation and expression. ”

“ Solly’s authority that “no artist appreciated Turner’s genius more than Cox did,” and he illustrates this with a charming anecdote of Cox’s reproduction from memory of Turner’s picture of Kingston Bank (now in the National Gallery) . Mr. Solly also states that Cox was one of the earliest subscribers to the “Liber,” and he adds, “that he did so at this time, when his means were so straitened, is a proof how highly he prized this admirable work.” ”

“ In the selection of a subject from nature the student should ever keep in view the principal object which induced him to make the sketch, whether it be mountains, a castle, group of trees, a cornfield, river scene, or any other object. ”

“ The last and surest method of obtaining instruction{15} from the works of others is not so much by copying them as by drawing the same subjects from nature immediately after a critical examination of them, while they are fresh in the memory. ”

“ London, however, offered more opportunities for study than Birmingham, and Cox made the most of them. He managed to become possessed of a collection of indifferent etchings from paintings by Poussin, Salvator Rosa and Claude, which had been published by Pond between 1741 and 1746. These he copied and studied for the sake of their composition and arrangement of light and shade, and a dealer named Simpson, who kept a shop in Greek Street, Soho, allowed him to make a large copy in water-colour of a fine painting by Poussin which hung in his shop. ”

“ Such force and expression should be displayed as would render the effect at the first glance intelligible to the observer. Merely to paint is not enough, for when no interest is felt nothing is more natural than that none should be conveyed. ”

“ The union of too great a variety of parts tends to destroy, or at least to weaken, the predominance of that which ought to be the principal of the composition, and which the student, when he comes to the colouring, should be careful to characterise by turning upon it the strongest light. ”

“ It is obviously a mistake to class such a man with the realists or naturalists who place scientific before artistic considerations, though it is easy to understand how the Mid-Victorians made such a blunder. ”

“ It is a drawing of Kenilworth Castle, an autotype of it being published in Mr. Neal Solly’s admirable “Memoir of the Life of David Cox” (Chapman & Hall, 1873) , a volume to which we are indebted for the details of the artist’s early life. The Kenilworth in Mr. Solly’s opinion cannot be dated later than 1806 or 1807; and to judge from the photographic reproduction it is especially interesting as an example of the imitative methods which were rife among the artists of those days. The works of the older and more successful masters were accepted as models to be copied and imitated. ”

“ Even now, however, we have not come to the end of Cox’s multifarious activities during this period. Besides being an amateur agitator and gardener, a prolific artist in water colour, and an overworked teacher, he seems to have turned author as well. In 1814 he published an educational work on landscape art, called: “A Treatise on Landscape Painting and Effect in Water-Colours, from the first Rudiments to the finished Picture, with Examples in Outline Effect and Colouring.” This was illustrated by a number of soft-ground etchings. ”

“ All the coloured reproductions in the present volume represent drawings made during the artist’s residence in Hereford. The Chepstow Bridge and Castle (Plate XII.) was probably one of the results of Cox’s first sketching tour after his removal, and this very drawing may possibly have formed one of the exhibits which he sent to the Society of Painters in Water-Colour in 1816. Plate XXIII. may represent the sketch made for the picture of Goodrich Castle on the Wye, which the artist exhibited in 1819. ”