David Cox Senior RWS

1783 - 1859

One of the most highly regarded and popular landscape painters in oils and watercolour of the first half of the 19th century, David Cox Senior was considered by his contemporaries to be rivalled only by Constable in his portrayal of nature's moods. Born in Deritend, Birmingham, Cox's artistic career began with an apprenticeship painting lockets and miniatures, progressing on to scenery painting. He moved to London in 1804, teaching at Dulwich from 1808, then taking up a teaching post in Hereford in 1815. As well as visits to France, tours in Wales, the West Country and the north of England provided much of Cox's subject matter throughout his career. A regular exhibitor at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours from 1812, Cox only took up oils in the last twenty years of his long career. He began making soft-ground etchings on copper in 1812 and published "Treatises on Landscape Painting and Effect in Water Colours". Cox returned to Birmingham in 1841, living in Harborne until his death.