John Rogers Cox

John Rogers Cox (March 24, 1915 – January 25, 1990) was an American painter from Terre Haute, Indiana. His style and subject matter align him with the Regionalist (American scene painting) and Magic Realist landscape tradition.

Early life and education Cox was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1915. His father, Wilson Naylor Cox, was president of the Terre Haute National Bank, later Terre Haute First National Bank.

Career Cox left his job at the bank in 1941 and was appointed the first director of the newly formed Sheldon Swope Art Gallery in Terre Haute having been offered the position by William T. Turman, professor of art at Indiana State Teachers College, a recognized artist and chief adviser to the Swope. Cox was the first name on the registry of guests for the show. After 1950 he focused on producing pen and pencil drawings rather than oil paintings. The painting appears in the farmhouse's living room in the 2012 science fiction thriller Looper.

White Cloud (1943) Cox's painting White Cloud was exhibited at the 1944 Painting in the United States Carnegie Survey show and won a 300 US dollar prize. Life magazine covered the exhibition and noted "Some critics believe that his stark landscapes will make him as famous as the late Grant Wood". The work was acquired by the Swope Art Museum in 2000.

Cloud Trails (1944) Cox's 1944 painting, Cloud Trails, consists of a landscape of precisely painted wheat stalks devoid of human figures under an expanse of blue sky with cloud trails and a full moon near the horizon. A barn in the landscape is covered with brightly colored advertisements typical of the artist's Midwestern hometown. A signed print produced from the lithograph is held in the Cleveland Museum of Art's collections. The Sheldon Swope Gallery held a John Rogers Cox retrospective exhibition in 1982 on its 40th anniversary. The museum currently holds five works by Cox, including a self-portrait drawn in pencil and his portrait of William T. Turman.

Critical reception Art historian John I. H. Baur described Cox's work as an exemplar of "hard, immaculate-related realism" in his 1951 study Revolution and Tradition in Modern American Art for the Library of Congress. Michael D. Hall, describing Cox's work in an essay to accompany the Flint Institute of Arts's exhibition in 2003, Great Lakes Muse: American Scene Painting from the Upper Midwest, 1910 - 1960, said "His own signature landscape vistas are imaginary Midwestern places filled with emptiness-visual contradictions suffused with momentous and ominous signs." Gray and Gold, 1942, oil on canvas, , Cleveland Museum of Art. The Meadow, 1948, oil on canvas, exhibited at the "Fifty Third Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity Art" held by the Institute of Chicago in 1949. The painting's price was $600. Wheat Fields, 1949, oil on canvas, , Norton Museum of Art. Wheat Shocks, 1951, lithograph, Cleveland Museum of Art. Untitled (Woman in Landscape), 1955–60, oil on panel, , John and Susan Horseman Collection. The Occupant , 1982, oil on canvas, , Swope Art Museum.