Background

David Cox was born on April 29, 1783 in Birmingham, United Kingdom. He was the son of a blacksmith.

Education

Cox studied drawing under Joseph Barber. Approximately at the age of fifteen, David was a pupil of Albert Fielder.

Career

During the mid-1800s, Cox was appointed an assistant grinding colours and preparing canvases for the scene painters. In 1804, he took up work as a scene painter at Astley's Theatre. The following year, in 1805, the painter made his first of many trips to Wales together with Charles Barber.

Since 1805, Cox exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. His paintings never reached high prices, so he earned his living mainly as a drawing master.

In 1813 Cox was appointed a drawing master of Staff College in Camberley, but he resigned shortly afterwards, finding little sympathy with the atmosphere of a military institution. After leaving the institute, Cox started to serve as a teacher at the Miss Croucher's School for Young Ladies in Hereford, a position he held until 1819.

In 1826, David Cox made his first trip to Belgium and the Netherlands and subsequently moved to London the following year. In 1829, he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and two years later, in 1831, at the Liverpool Academy of Arts.

By the early 1840s, his income from sales of his watercolours was sufficient to allow him to abandon his work as a drawing master, and in June 1841, he moved with his wife, Mary Agg, to Greenfield House in Harborne, then a village on Birmingham's south western outskirts. It was this move, that would enable the higher levels of freedom and experimentation, that were to characterise his later work.

Cox's later work, produced after his move to Birmingham, was marked by simplification, abstraction and a stripping down of detail. His art of the period combined the breadth and weight characteristic of the earlier English watercolour school, together with a boldness and freedom of expression comparable to later impressionism.

Achievements

• By the 1840s Cox, alongside Peter De Wint and Copley Fielding, had become recognised as one of the leading figures of the English landscape watercolour style of the first half of the 19th century. "Rhyl Sands" painting, created in 1854, is one of his most famous works.
  
  In 1839, two of Cox's watercolours were bought from the Old Water Colour Society exhibition by the Marquis of Conynha for Queen Victoria.
  
  David was also a President of the Associated Artists in Water Colour.
  
  There are two Blue Plaque memorials commemorating him at 116 Greenfield Road, Harborne, Birmingham, and at 34 Foxley Road, Kennington, London, SW9, where he lived from 1827.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Beach Scene - Sunrise

  • On Lancaster Sands, Low Tide

  • Lake Scene, North Wales

  • Hay on Wye

  • Lugg Meadows, near Hereford

  • Girl in a Pinafore

  • Coast Scene

  • Pastoral Scene in Herefordshire

  • The Long Gallery, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

  • A Welsh Funeral, Bettws Church

  • A Country Scene

  • The Night Train

  • Bathers Disturbed by a Bull

  • Carreg Cennan Castle

  • A River Scene

  • Waiting for the Ferry

  • The Old Bridge at Bridgnorth, Shropshire

  • Landscape with a Man Washing His Feet at a Fountain after Poissin

  • On Carrington Moss, Cheshire

  • Scene in a Lane

  • Wooded Landscape

  • A View of Westminster Bridge, Looking West towards Lambeth Palace and Westminster Abbey

  • Beddgelert Mill and Bridge

  • Beckenham Church, Kent

  • Cottage Interior

  • A Country Track Leading to Harlech Castle

  • St. Mary's Church and the Shire Hall, Warwick

  • The Vale of Dolwyddelan

  • The Skylark

  • Worcester Cathedral, River Severn

  • Beeston Castle, Cheshire

  • Westminster from Lambeth

  • A Railway Engine

  • Moonlight Landscape

  • The Pont des Arts with the Louvre and Tuileries from the Quai Conti

  • The Birmingham Horse Fair

  • The Cross Roads

  • Great Orme Head from the Mouth of the Conwy, North Wales

  • Wind, Rain and Sunshine

  • Vale of Clwyd

  • A View of the Pavillon de Flore and the Tuileries from the Seine, Notre Dame, Paris

  • A Mountain Landscape

  • The Long Gallery, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

  • Porte St. Denis, Paris

  • Bettws-y-Coed Church

  • Study of a Dog

  • River Scene with Boys Fishing

  • A Terrace, with Figures, Haddon Hall

  • The NIght Train

  • All Saints Church, Hastings

  • Still LIfe. Basket, Foxgloves, Clothes and Other Objects

  • Buckingham House from the Green Park

  • A Welsh Road

  • George IV Embarking for Scotland at Greenwich

  • On the Medway

  • Welsh Shepherds

  • Pont Neuf from the Quai de l'Ecole, Paris

  • Junction of the Severn and the Wye with Chepstow in the Distance

  • The Challange

  • Greenfield House, Harorne

  • Crossing Lancaster Sands

  • Clouds

  • Vale of Clwyd

  • The Long Gallery, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

  • The Rookery, Sutton Coldfield

  • The Poplar Avenue, after Hobbema

  • Peace and War. Lympne Church and Castle

  • Carthage. Aeneas and Achates

  • St. Eustache, Paris

  • Two Naval Pensioners with Shipping Behind

  • The Wayfarers

  • Kenilworth Castle

  • Waiting for the Ferry Boat

  • Rhaiadr Cwm, North Wales

  • Bettws-y-Coed

  • The Hayfield

  • Study of Fish, Skate and Cod

  • Tending Sheep, Betws-y-Coed

  • Antwerp, Morning

  • Butcher's Row, Hereford

  • Crypt of Kirkstall Abbey (after J.M.W. Turner)

  • Going to the Hayfield

  • Cornfield

  • Pont-Y-Pair, near Bettwys-Y-Coed, North Wales

  • On the Moors, near Bettws-y-Coed

  • Calais. Hôtel de Guise

  • Keep the Left Road

  • Waiting for the Ferry, Morning

  • A Welsh Funeral, Betwys-y-Coed

  • The Breiddin Hills, near Welshpool

  • Flying the Kite

  • Sunset, Hastings. Beached Fishing Vessels

  • Calais. Street Scene with Lighthouse

  • St. Eustache, Paris

  • The Great Hall, Haddon

  • Ben Vorlich

  • View of Windsor. Life Guards Approaching the River

  • Going Out Hawking

  • Outskirts of a Wood, with Gypsies

  • Windmill

  • Porch of St. Philip's Church, Birmingham

  • Ulverston Sands

  • Still Life

  • A Mountain Torrent

  • Handsworth Old Church, Birmingham

  • Near the Pont d'Arcole, Paris

  • Classical Landscape (After Poussin)

  • Vale of Clwyd

  • Pavillon de Flore, Tuileries, Paris

  • Street in Beauvais

  • Junction of the Severn and the Wye with a Rainbow

  • Sunset, Hastings. Beached Fishing Vessels

  • Windmill

  • Place du Palais Royal, Paris

  • Windermere during the Regatta

  • Harlech Castle, Wales

  • Kenilworth Castle

  • Rhyl Sands

  • Crossing the Moor

  • Gipsies on Dulwich Common

  • Tour d'Horloge, Rouen

  • A Ship

  • A Bridge

  • Peat Gatherers

  • A Windy Day

  • The Long Gallery, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

  • View near Bettws-y-Coed

  • Penman Bach

  • Calais Sands with Fort Rouge

  • The Opening of the New London Bridge

  • The Road across the Common

  • Rhyl Sands

  • Stepping Stones, Bettws-y-Coed

  • Study of a Donkey

  • View near Lancaster

  • Horses Drinking

  • The Way to the Hayfield

  • Crossing Lancaster Sands

  • Calais Pier

  • Going to the Hayfield

  • Pirates' Isle

  • Barden Tower, Yorkshire

  • Crossing the Sands

  • Westminster from Battersea

  • Rhyl Sands

  • The Welsh Funeral

  • Mountain Heights, Cader Idris

  • Pass of Llanberis, Caernarvonshire, Wales

  • The Wyndcliff, River Wye

  • A Church (Possibly at Wrexham)

  • Near Knaresborough

  • In Windsor Park

  • Moorland Road

  • Sun, Wind and Rain

  • Place St. Barthélemy, Rouen

  • Cottage by a River

  • Boy Opening a Gate for Sheep

  • Windermere

Membership

By 1810 David Cox was elected President of the Associated Artists in Water Colour.

• Society of Painters in Water Colour

  1812

• 

  Royal Birmingham Society of Artists , United Kingdom

  1842

Connections

child:

David Cox Junior

Wife:

Mary Agg

References

• David Cox, painter of nature's moods (The Lewis 'Introduction to painters' series)
  1949
• Sun, Wind, and Rain: The Art of David Cox (Yale Center for British Art)
  2008