Reproductions of a number of charcoal and chalk sketches belonging to this later period of his life have been included in the present volume. Large charcoal drawings like The Salt Marsh ([Plate XXV].), The Beach ([Plate XXVII].), Windy Weather ([Plate XXVIII].), and The Hill Side ([Plate XXXIII].), lose something of their impressiveness when reduced in size, as these have necessarily been, but enough remains, even in this form, of their freshness, largeness of conception and sense of movement, to delight the intelligent amateur. No one at all susceptible to the higher beauties of art could remain insensible to the fascination of the bold, synthetic handling of The Peasants on Horseback ([Plate III].). In some of these late sketches—notably in the two Near Kenilworth ([Plates VII]. and [XXIV].)—the loose, flowing touch often seems a trifle too disdainful of the individual forms of objects. But when the artist is serenely self-possessed his style is delightfully intimate and unbuttoned, a candid revelation of his sympathies and moods. When thoroughly interested he becomes astonishingly vivid and succinct, as in the Kirkby Stephen ([Plate XX].), Llanrwst ([Plate XVI].), and Clapham, Yorkshire ([Plate XXII].). How much his art had become a matter of feeling and impulse is shown by the glaring way he fails when his sympathies have not been aroused; the draughtsmanship of the Architectural Study ([Plate XXII].) is about as bad as draughtsmanship can well be—bald, perfunctory, external. The pencil and stump drawing of Carnarvon Castle ([Plate XXX].), for all its lightness and charm of atmospheric suggestion, is “mappy” in draughtsmanship—its drawing being mere “spacing,” without intimacy in the form or sympathy with the structure. The drawing of Rotterdam ([Plate XLI].) is again external and unsympathetic. These drawings might well have been chosen as illustrations of the truth of one of Cox’s own remarks: “Merely to paint” (or draw) “is not enough, for when no interest is felt nothing is more natural than that none should be conveyed.”
From the passages quoted above from his “Treatise on Landscape Painting and Effect”—in which this remark occurs—it is evident that Cox must be classed among the Idealists rather than among the Realists or Naturalists. The character of a picture, he insists, should be determined by the character and appropriate sentiments of its principal object; “every other object introduced should be subservient to it, and the attraction of the one should be the attraction of the whole,” he writes. He insists upon the necessity “of becoming thoroughly acquainted with and obtaining a proper feeling of the subject,” and maintains that “the picture should be complete and perfect in the mind before it is ever traced upon the canvas.” And these were undoubtedly the principles upon which his finest works were wrought. 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. They confused what the language of the schools describes as objective idealism with subjective idealism. Compared with the emptiness and vapidity of a Barret, Cox may well have seemed realistic and naturalistic. But his work has nothing of the disjunctive observation or cold-blooded, rationalistic, inventory-making of a typical realist like John Brett. Cox paints what Reynolds has called “the unadulterated habits of nature.” He never aims at “deceiving the eye,” “nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects which only serve to catch the sense” and “divide the attention.” The one great design he always keeps in view is that of “speaking to the heart.”
It would be useless to pretend that Cox is altogether free from the defects of his qualities. He is often too general, vague and empty. Sometimes he is passive and timid, as though he hoped to get his effects by merely “leaving out,” or by overlooking and scorning the individuality of natural objects. But he possesses in abundance the great and inspiriting virtues of the idealists, as well as some of their defects. He takes us away from the world of bare unrelated fact into regions where the human consciousness can beat its wings and feel glad. His art is of the centre, thoroughly typical and national. 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.
I should like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. A. Walker, of 118, New Bond Street—to whose kindness the publishers and editor are indebted for permission to publish this selection from Cox’s drawings and sketches—for his courtesy in permitting me to examine at my leisure the whole of the drawings, sketches and sketch books of David Cox which he is fortunate enough to possess.[{21}][{20}]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE II
OLD WESTMINSTER