Not only has Kenyon Cox placed himself in the front rank of American artists through his paintings, but he has also made a name for himself as an art critic.
He was born at Warren, Ohio, on October 27, 1856. His father was General Jacob Dolson Cox. He studied art when quite young, first at Cincinnati and Philadelphia, and then at the age of twenty-one went to Paris to study. There for five years he was under Carolus-Duran and Gérôme.
In 1882 he returned to New York and opened a studio there. Shortly after this he began teaching in the Art Students’ League, and had much success in that line. In 1892 he married Louise Howland King, who is well known as a painter herself.
The earlier work of Cox consisted mostly of the nude. He received little encouragement for these pictures, however, and turned to mural decoration, in which he has achieved prominence. His first step toward mural work was the painting of two decorations for the Library of Congress at Washington. In two tympanums (the flat, triangular part of a pediment) each thirty-four feet in length, he has painted the Arts and the Sciences. Among his better known examples are the frieze for the courtroom of the Appellate Court, New York City, and the decorations for the Walker Art Gallery at Bowdoin College, for the Capitol at St. Paul, Minnesota, and for other public and private buildings. His decoration, “The Beneficence of the Law,” in the Essex County Courthouse at Newark, New Jersey, is one of his best-known paintings.
Of late years Mr. Cox has spent much time on wall decorations. He is a maker of pictures and a master of line; but is not an interpreter of life nor an exploiter of ideas.
He is the author of a number of books on art, among which are “Old Masters and New,” and “Painters and Sculptors,” in addition to some poems. He was elected to the National Academy in 1903, and has received many medals and honors.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 2, No. 15. SERIAL No. 67
COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. INC.
