Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/413

 better adapted than water-colours to the expression of his peculiar genius; but during his life and for many years after his death he was scarcely known as a painter in oils.

It was partly because he wished to devote himself to painting in oils that he left London in 1841 and returned to the neighbourhood of his native place; and it was at Greenfield House, Greenfield Lane, Harborne, near Birmingham, that he lived from that year till his death. To this period belong all his great oil pictures and the noblest and most poetical of his water-colour drawings. The inspiration of most of these was drawn mainly from North Wales, especially from Bettws-y-Coed and its neighbourhood, to which he paid a yearly visit from 1844 to 1856. In 1843 he had a somewhat serious illness, and to recruit himself he went to stay with his sister at Sale. Though now attaining the zenith of his power, his prices were still low, and his greatness was only recognised by a few. One of his small oils was rejected by the British Institution in 1844, and the following year his drawings were ill-hung at the Water-colour Society, and he complained that he could not finish to please the public. This year he had a bad chest attack, and went to Rowsley, Haddon Hall, and later to the Royal Oak at Bettws. It was in this year also that he lost his wife, whose health had been gradually failing for some time. They had lived very happily together for thirty-seven years, and he felt her loss deeply. She was a very intelligent woman, who took the greatest interest in his work. She sat with him while he painted, and was an admirable and severe critic. Cox's deep religious convictions aided him in recovering from this blow. In December he wrote to his son and daughter-in-law: ‘I certainly was very much out of spirits when I wrote on Thursday, but I am much better now; and I believe I have no real cause to be otherwise, for all things, I feel, are ordained for the very best, for my good. I have been at my work with more calmness, and shall, I have no doubt, do better and be better in all ways, with God's grace and assistance. Your letter was of the most encouraging kind, too, with regard to my work, and yesterday I took your advice and immediately took up a canvas to begin an oil for the institution.’ This picture was called ‘Wind, Rain, and Sunshine’ (or ‘Sun, Wind, and Rain’), a title suggested by Turner's ‘Rain, Steam, and Speed,’ exhibited the previous year (1844) at the Royal Academy. The next year (1846) he painted two of his most celebrated oil pictures, ‘The Vale of Clwyd’ (3 ft. 3 in. by 4 ft. 8 in.) and ‘Peace and War’ (18½ in. by 24 in.). The former was returned unsold from the Liverpool Exhibition, in the catalogue of which it was priced at eighty guineas; the latter was given to a friend, and afterwards bought from him by Cox for 20l., and sold again by Cox for the same sum. In 1872 ‘The Vale of Clwyd’ was sold for 2,200l., and ‘Peace and War’ (quite a small picture) for 3,601l. 10s. Another ‘Vale of Clwyd’ (painted 1848) sold the same year for 2,500l. Indeed he may be said to have spent the rest of his life in painting pictures and making drawings which are now (in England) among the most highly prized and coveted art treasures of the world. In 1883 his ‘Going to the Hayfield’ brought 2,405l., and in 1884, at the sale of Mr. Potter's collection, ‘The Church at Bettws-y-Coed’ sold for 2,677l. At a sale a little later in the same year ‘Going to Market’ fetched 2,047l. ‘The Skylark’ (1849) and ‘The Seashore at Rhyl’ are other oil pictures painted by Cox after 1845 which have in recent years sold for sums exceeding two thousand pounds. His water-colour drawings also fetch large sums. At the Quilter sale (April 1875) 114 drawings, of which many were quite small, sold for rather more than 22,900l., averaging above 200l. each. Two fetched 998l., four others over 1,000l., and one, ‘The Hayfield,’ 2,950l., a price unparalleled for any water-colour, even by Turner. Nor has any landscape of the size of ‘Peace and War’ (oil) ever sold for anything like the same sum. Yet he never received more than 100l. for any one work. A good deal of pity has been expressed for him on this account, but it was well said by Mr. Edward Radcliffe (son of the engraver already mentioned), in a speech delivered at a dinner given by the Liverpool Art Club in 1875 to commemorate an exhibition of David Cox's works, that ‘he would not like his life to have been changed one bit,’ and ‘no man more thoroughly enjoyed his life. His habits and tastes were of the most simple kind. He saved what to him was a large competency. His house with all its surroundings was a model of English comfort. Suppose he had been besieged by patrons and dealers, he might have launched out … kept his carriage, taken his '40 port, and died twenty years before he did, and, instead of being remembered by troops of friends as a dear simple friend, only thought of as a big Mogul.’

The interest of these last years as regards his life is centred at Bettws-y-Coed. As Suffolk to Constable and Norfolk to Old Crome, so was North Wales to Cox. He painted well wherever he went—London, Hereford, Yorkshire, Lancashire, or Calais—