DAVID COX – A ST. IVES PERSPECTIVE

PART I
The life and works of David Cox ROI. RWA. began, bathed in the light of Cornwall.  Drawn to the bright Bohemian light of St. Ives from Falmouth, Cox developed his craft, painting alongside Borlase Smart, Fleetwood Walker, Leonard Fuller, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham but more crucially he was Cornish, from this land of light and sea, joining a small group of native painters whose names ring down through art history. 

A very personable fellow by all accounts, Cox was chosen by Borlase Smart as Secretary to the St. Ives Art Society to continue the work of accommodating the modern within the traditional, but it was to be an impossible task.  Alfred Munnings RA (the absent St. Ives President) abandoned St. Ives to its devices and therefore after all the wrangling peculiar to groups of British artists Cox instigated the formation of the Penwith Society of Artists.  Exhausted by doing so much for others Cox assimilated the lessons coming from French modern painting and was again drawn, through his compulsion to paint, to the light of St. Tropez where he would exist as a painter seeking the shadows of Picasso and Braque – the colours of Mattisse and Bonnard.

Painting however is a lonely business and Cox missed ‘family’, so returned to Suffolk where he had briefly lived after St. Ives, to set up a school and share with others his knowledge and enthusiasm.  But he was also drawn to the Eastern light that he knew J.M.W. Turner would have known, again to vanish into the mists of that enigmatic coast.

So once more the Cornish light of Penwith falls upon the works of this great Cornishman who like many of his County have had to leave to find themselves.

It is sad, but typical that when invited to this show the representative for the St. Ives Art Society said, “Oh no – he’s not one of ours!”

 - The Penzance Art Gallery follows a more enlightened path. 

© Vaughan Warren RAS

PZAG 11/11/05

Go to exhibition

DAVID COX  R.O.I., R.W.A.
 

An Obituary by The Rev. Paul Biddlecombe for the Daily Telegraph, March 1979. 

His many friends and admirers, as well as a wider public, will not wish the passing of this artist to go unrecorded.

David Cox died at his home, Underwood Grange, Naughton, Suffolk, on 18^th March.  A descendant of the more famous David Cox, he was born at Falmouth in 1915, and spent the first part of his life in Cornwall, where he quickly established a reputation as an oil-painter.  He was then Secretary of the St. Ives Society of Artists, which included, among many other celebrated names, those of Sir Alfred Munnings, S.J. Lamorna Birch, Dame Laura Knight, Dod Proctor, Arnesby Brown, Fleetwood Walker, and Stanley Spencer.

He was made a member of the Royal West of England Academy and of the R.O.I.  His works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, Paris Salon, New English Art Club, R.O.I., R.W.A., and numerous other galleries in England, the Commonwealth and America.

In 1948 he was responsible for the launching of an appeal which saved a large block of studios in the town of St. Ives from commercial development.  In 1949 he took an equally prominent part, in conjunction with other members of the St. Ives Society, in breaking away to form a new Society, the Penwith Society of Artists in Cornwall.  Soon afterwards David Cox severed his connection with the Art Colony and started his own school of painting in the beautiful Stour Valley in Suffolk.

There followed a move to France, where his studio on a mountainside in Provence overlooked the Mediterranean, and his preoccupation with intensity of light and colour became more pronounced.

Returning to Suffolk he painted for a time almost in seclusion, and seldom exhibited his work.  In the last few years he gave much of his time to teaching students.  He always felt that it was right for him to pass on to others the knowledge he had, and many students owe to him more than they can express, for the encouragement and inspiration he gave them.

Borlase Smart once described David Cox’s earlier work thus; “David Cox is well known for his sensitive and luminous canvases of figure and landscape subjects, with their characteristic leaning towards silver-greys.”

 In 1949, the Cambridge Daily News, describing an exhibition at Mr. Ernest Hilton’s gallery in King Street, wrote, “(his paintings) stand as an invitation to share with the artist the things that please him, bright and pleasant colours, flying birds, the female form… big, bold statements.  Some of his best ideas have received a stimulus from other sources, but those sources are good.  The influence of Picasso and Matisse are particularly noticeable, and the paintings have their own individual authority as well.”

Perhaps the most memorable comment, dating from the St. Ives days, was “One of the loveliest paintings is “A little Cornish girl”, misty and timeless.”

In his later years David Cox’s work became progressively more abstract and simplified, with large areas of joyous colour.

This truly creative artist will be remembered not only for his very individual approach to painting, but also for the way he endeared himself, as a person, to those to whom he sought to impart his own zest and his own subtle appreciation of beauty.

Rev. P. Biddlecombe