David Cox

David Cox

1783 –1859

The painter David Cox was best known for his work as a watercolorist and his role in developing the Birmingham School of landscape artists. He was born in Birmingham on April 29, 1783, and trained by several artisans before moving to London in 1804. He began as a scenery painter but soon embarked on a series of sketching tours in Wales and northern England. The resulting paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1805, and he garnered particular praise for his watercolors, which fostered a growing interest in impressionistic effects. He became an associate member of the Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1813 and exhibited regularly throughout his career. However, from 1808 his living was derived primarily from teaching after he secured his first aristocratic pupil, Colonel the Hon. H. Windsor, the future Earl of Plymouth, and was subsequently engaged by socially prominent individuals and by schools in London, Farnham, and Hereford. From around 1811 to 1816 he also published treatises on draftsmanship and landscape painting that sold well into the middle of the nineteenth century. He returned to Birmingham in 1840 and worked there almost until his death in 1859, often spending summers in North Wales and pursuing a belated interest in oil painting.