David Cox, Sen., O.W.S. (Birmingham 1783-1859)

As a student Cox copied works by masters of picturesque and classical landscapes; Nicholas Poussin, Gaspard Dughet and Lorrain, and continued to copy them later in his career, e.g. Landscape with a man washing his feet at a fountain, after Poussin, circa 1821, at the Yale Center for British Art. The present watercolour was executed at a time when Cox was experimenting with the picturesque style of his predecessors that had been adopted by his contemporaries, most notably J.M.W. Turner, whose work Cox saw in London in 1821 and returned home to begin his own watercolours 'in recollection of the glowing and imaginative pictures lately produced by Turner' (S. Wilcox, Sun, Wind and Rain, Yale University, 2008, p. 22).