Kenyon Cox
     Kenyon Cox (1856-1919) was one of the interesting figures in the history of American art. He began his artistic life as an artist, but from early in his career as an art student in Paris he began writing articles and reviews for many American publications. Though Cox was a gifted writer, it was his classical artistic training that made him an especially observant and knowledgeable critic. As a painter, illustrator and muralist, who struggled with the same artistic problems as his contemporaries and the established masters, he had a special insight into both their genius and their shortcomings.
     When reading Cox it is clear that he is first and foremost a traditionalist who believes that inspiration must go hand-in-hand with craftsmanship and a reverence for the masters of the past. However, he is almost unfailingly fair-minded and even-handed and one doesn't feel that his less than positive reviews or opinions are the product of personal animosity.
     In addition to his hundreds of published articles, Kenyon Cox wrote a number of books during his career. Most of these are long out-of-print and rare, but a few of them have been republished in recent decades in small editions. There are also a number of recent books on Kenyon Cox and his circle by H. Wayne Morgan, a distinguished History Professor at the University of Oklahoma who developed a keen interest in the turn-of-the-century critics who fought to maintain classical standards in the face of the rising tide of modernism. Professor Morgan has also edited two volumes of the letters of Kenyon Cox.
Books by Kenyon Cox:
The Classic Point of View: Six Lectures on Painting
1911. New York: Duffield and Company; 232 pages
     If there is one single Cox book a painter should seek out, perhaps it should be The Classic Point of View, which was an edited adaptation of the then-famous Scammon Lectures that he delivered at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1911. He described them as his "definite credo - a detailed and explicit confession of artistic faith." The essays are as follows: "The Classic Spirit," "The Subject in Art," "Design," "Drawing," "Light and Color," and "Technique." Cox uses examples of works by great painters like Millet, Poussin, Hogarth, Velazquez, Leonardo, Botticelli, Corot, Rembrandt, Ingres and Titian to illustrate the ideas and concepts he puts forth.
Old Masters and New: Essays in Art Criticism
1905. New York: Duffield and Company; 285 pages
     Old Masters and New, dedicated to the Boston painter John La Farge, was the first book of Kenyon Cox's essays. The first part begins with the sculptors of the Italian Renaissance and continues with insightful essays on Perugino, Michelangelo, the Venetians, Veronese, Durer, Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt and Blake. Ther second part begins with the Pre-Raphaelites, Meissonier, Baudry, Puvis de Chevannes, Whistler, Sargent and St. Gaudens.
Kenyon Cox, sketch of Michelangelo's Night
Graphite/Charcoal, 18" x 24" 1879
Painters and Sculptors: A Second Series of Old Masters and New
1907. New York: Duffield and Company
     Painters and Sculptors was the second series of essays on art and artists by Kenyon Cox. Dedicated to Edwin H. Blashfield, the esteemed muralist, this book begins with an essay on the education of painters. Following are essays on the Pollaiuoli Brothers, a fascinating defense of paintings of fashionable clothes titled "Painters of the Mode," another essay on Holbein, and a tercentenary essay on Rembrandt, Rodin and Lord Leighton.
What is Painting: Winslow Homer and Other Essays
 Reprinted in 1988 by "Classical America" (WW Norton and Company)
Reprint is a combination of the following original editions:
Winslow Homer 1914: New York, privately printed
Concerning Painting: Considerations Theoretical and Historical 1917: New York, Charles Scribner's Sons

     What is Painting was reprinted in 1988 as part of the "Classical America" series by W.W. Norton. The reprint actually combined two books, a rare extended essay, "Winslow Homer," that was privately printed in 1914, and "Concerning Painting," which was originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1917. The Homer essay, which relies on the classic Walter Howe Downes biography of Homer (1911) for its factual information, is a work of criticism that traces the New England painter's humble beginnings as a self-taught artist and engraver to his eventual evolution as the greatest American artist of the 19th century. The second part of the reprinted book is a treatise titled "Concerning Painting: Considerations Theoretical and Historical." It includes "What is Painting" with part I, "Painting as an Art of Imitation" and part II, "Painting as an Art of Realism." The final essays include "The Culmination of the Renassaince," "The Venetians," "Dutch and Flemish Painting," "Naturalism in the 19th Century," "The Lovers of Tradition" and Mural Paintings in France and America.
     Cox's essay on 19th-century Naturalism shows that the Impressionists and the Academic and Salon painters were actually two sides of the same coin. Both were concerned with depicting a heightened degree of reality. In the Impressionist's case, it was capturing light, color and atmosphere; in the case of the Academics it was the realistic depiction of figures - whether historical or contemporary - pictured in three dimensional settings often rendered down to the most insignificant detail.
Kenyon Cox, The Stars Sang in Their Spheres, Grisaille on Canvas 24" x 18" 1886
Collections of letters by Kenyon Cox:
An American Art Student in Paris: The Letters of Kenyon Cox
Edited by H. Wayne Morgan
1986. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press; 217 pages
     Edited by Professor H. Wayne Morgan, this collection is an enlightening series of letters that Kenyon Cox wrote during his years as an art student in Paris. Through Cox's beautifully written missives home, the reader learns about the study of art in both the private ateliers of Paris and the official Ecoles des Beaux-Arts. Cox writes about the minutiae of daily life - the financial worries that plagued him throughout his existence as well as the cultural life of late-19th-century Paris. Cox was a contemporary and friend of many at the American artists of the day, and he studied with Carlous-Duran and Jean-Leon Gerome, who many artists felt was the finest Parisian teacher. His letters reveal the hijinks of Parisian art students, their struggles to master the classical artistic curriculum and their trips to the country to paint out-of-doors, giving the reader an insight into the ideals and principles that the traditional painters held dear. Cox's comments on the artistic trends of the day illuminate a vital period of 19th-century art.
An Artist of the American Renaissance: The Letters of Kenyon Cox 1883-1919
Edited by H. Wayne Morgan
1995. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press; 185 pages
     Kenyon Cox's correspondents included many of America's finest artists and tastemakers of the late-19th and early-20th century, including the critic Frank Jewett Mather; Presidents Taft and Wilson; artists Charles Courtney Curran, Edwin Blashfield, Will Low, and John Ferguson Weir; and architects Charles F. McKim and Cass Gilbert. Through Cox's latters, the life of a turn-of-a-century artist is revealed - his struggles for financial stability and artistic success, the day-to-day of business of an artist and the rare triumphs. Because Cox was an accomplished muralist, the coordination of his work with that of the architects of the American Renaissance period is revealing. Cox was an insightful critic and a gifted writer and his traditionalist views provide a crucial counterpoint to those of the modernists, which have been more widely disseminated. Cox's letters to his mother, wife - the artist Louise King Cox - and his children humanize the artist and critic as a son, husband and father.
Biography of Kenyon Cox:
Kenyon Cox: A Life in American Art
by H. Wayne Morgan
1994. Kent, Ohio: The Kent University Press; 246 pages
     H. Wayne Morgan, a distinguished history professor from Oklahoma State University, has spent a significant part of his career shining light on a period of American art history that has remained far too long in the shadows. He has written and edited a number of books devoted to the career of the traditional artist and art critic Kenyon Cox. Although Cox was once a major figure in American cultural life, both his art and his writing have slipped into obscurity. During the early controversies over modern art, Cox was known for the furious broadsides that he launched at the 1913 Armory Show, the landmark exhibition that introduced many Americans to modern art. Morgan has recognized that in the wake of modernism the traditional critics of the era and their opinions have largely disappeared from publication, leaving only one side of the debate to be represented.
Kenyon Cox
Augustus Saint Gaudens
Oil on Canvas
33 1/2" x 47" 1908
     Kenyon Cox was born into a prominent Ohio family. His father, Jacob Dolson Cox, was a Civil War general, Governor of Ohio and a university president. A sickly boy, he studied at the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art before moving to Paris where he matriculated at the Atelier of Carlous-Duran, the Academie Julian, the studio of Jean-Leon Gerome and the official Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Cox was a traditionalist who valued the academic approach. Even as a student, he had a critical eye and a gift for writing, and began reviewing exhibitions before his student days was over. Much of Cox's career was spent on mural painting, and with a few notable exceptions the major muralists from the late-nineteenth century have been forgotten. A member of the Cornish Colony of painters and sculptors, Cox was a talented and precise draughtsman, but today his allegorical drawings largely gather dust in museum basements.
     Cox was an outspoken critic and his forty years of reviews made him a major presence on the American scene. H. Wayne Morgan has relied on the Cox papers at Columbia University and at the Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institution) and his large body of criticism and art history to produce an accurate and fair-minded picture of the artist and his era.
Kenyon Cox works of Art:
     Works by Kenyon Cox can be found at many American museums. The Brooklyn Museum has the largest collection, with many drawings and studies for his mural projects. His famous portrait of the sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and his portrait of Maxfield Parrish is located at the National Academy of Design, a few blocks away.
copyright Jeffrey Morseburg 2004
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