Kenyon Cox

Kenyon Cox, Portrait of Henry L. Fry, 1883, oil on canvas, Cincinnati Art Museum

Kenyon Cox (October 27, 1856 – March 17, 1919) was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, writer, and teacher. Cox was an influential and important early instructor at the Art Students League of New York. He was the designer of the League's logo, whose motto is Nulla Dies Sine Linea or No Day Without a Line.

Biography Cox was born in Warren, Ohio, the son of Jacob Dolson Cox and Helen Finney Cox. As a young adult, he studied art at Cincinnati's Art Academy of Cincinnati (formerly known as the McMicken School of Art), but soon became aware of the lack of opportunity and artistic presence in Cincinnati. After visiting the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, he decided that Philadelphia and the art academy there had much more to offer him than Cincinnati did. Cox enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts hoping to receive better instruction and eventually secure for himself a way to study in Europe.

Paris and travels In 1877 Cox moved to Paris like many American artists of the day to be a part of what he believed to be a sort of second renaissance in art. There he studied at the studio of Carolus-Duran and then under Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts. Cox wrote of his initial impression of Paris saying that there was "so much artistic material here that one might almost be content to stay here and paint for years…One can't dive down a crooked street or turn a sharp corner without finding more to paint than he could by hunting months for a subject in America. If Paris is at all like this it must indeed be a paradise for artists."

A Student's Memory Cox made a profound impact on the lives and careers of his students, who included Philadelphia-based painter Margaretta S. Hinchman and artist Jerome Myers, who studied with Cox during his early years of training at the Art Student's League. Though Myers later took a very different path in his own artistic work, he clearly recalled this teacher in his 1940 autobiography, "Artist In Manhattan":

Artistic theory Nude study in graphite; preparatory drawing for the allegorical figure of Romance in The Arts mural at the Library of Congress Jefferson Building. Drawing created 1896, digitally restored.

Cox's art was very different from the cubist, neo-impressionist, fauvist, expressionist and modernist styles that emerged during his lifetime. He advocated careful drawing and modulated color, and he frequently used allegory and symbolism to present his ideas. Kenyon Cox painted in the realistic manner and earned a reputation for landscapes, portraits and genre studies. His idealized nudes and traditional treatment of classical themes had little in common with the popular avant-garde art of the day.

Cox, adamantly loyal to the preservation of the "older methods", set himself in opposition to modern styles. In his 1917 book Concerning Painting: Considerations Theoretical and Historical, Cox restated his earlier feelings about the "Two Ways of Painting" saying:

For at least fourteen thousand years, then, from the time of the cavemen to our own day, painting has been an imitative art, and it seems likely that it will continue to be so. That it should, within a few years, entirely reverse its current, and should flow in the opposite direction for thousands of years to come seems highly improbable, not to say incredible. Yet we are gravely told that it is about to do this; that, at the hands of its representative element, reached its final and definite form, and that no further changes are possible. Henceforth, as long as men live in the world they are to be satisfied with a non-representative art — an art fundamentally different from that which they have known and practiced and enjoyed.

Cox wrote extensively to persuade the art world and the public to embrace traditional, representational art.

Murals Kenyon Cox, Panel of the Sciences, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Kenyon Cox began to focus more on mural painting after the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Cox painted murals in the state capitol buildings of Des Moines, St. Paul and Madison as well as other courthouses, libraries and college buildings. In 1896-97 Cox painted murals in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Cox also made numerous mosaics for places like the Wisconsin State Capitol building.

In 1910 Kenyon Cox was awarded the Medal of Honor for mural painting by the Architectural League. He also served as president of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1915 to 1919.

Poetry Kenyon Cox, An Eclogue, 1890, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Kenyon Cox also began to write more articles and became an art critic for numerous magazines in New York including The Nation, Century and Scribner's. In the summer of 1883 Cox began to write poetry for the public:

She lived in Florence centuries ago, That lady smiling there. What her name or rank I do not know— I know that she was fair.

For some great man — his name, like hers, forgot And faded from Men's sight— Loved her — he must have loved her — and has wrought This bust for our delight.

Whether he gained her love or had her scorn Full happy was his fate. He saw her, heard her speak; he was not born Four hundred years too late.

The palace throngs in every room but this — Here I am left alone. Love, there is none to see — I press a kiss Upon thy lips of stone.

This poem was a big success in New York City art circles and earned Cox a great deal of attention. According to Wayne H. Morgan who wrote the book, Kenyon Cox : a Life in American Art 1856-1919, "The poem and its Unknown Lady symbolized the need among artists, especially those with classical interests, for intense emotion expressed through acceptable forms, and for the idealization of women." Cox himself painted many idealized women mostly in the form of the classic nude.

In 1895 Cox published another poem, "The Gospel of Art", that summarized his idealism about the artist's role in the intensifying emotion through sacrifice, and on the function of art in culture:

Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve The thing thou lovest, though the body starve. Who works for glory misses oft the goal; Who works for money coins his very soul; Work for the work's sake, then, and it may be That these things shall be added unto thee.

Marriage Kenyon Cox, Portrait of Louise Howland King Cox, 1892, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. While working in New York, Cox began to teach at the Art Student League. One of his female students, Louise Howland King from San Francisco, caught Cox's eye and they began to correspond outside of class. In an early letter to Louise, Cox tried to convince her to persist with her art, writing: "We must work for the work's sake. You say you almost forget why you paint at all; well, I have long since satisfied myself that I paint because I cannot help it—because I love the work itself and would rather be a miserably bad painter than a successful man in any other work—because the mere joy of trying and even the excitement of failure are the only true pleasures for me." They had three children. Leonard, born in 1894 and named after Leonard Opdycke, was a war hero and had a career in city planning and architecture. Son Allyn, born two years later, became an artist, particularly noted for his mural paintings, and an interior decorator. Daughter Caroline born in 1898 was also a talented artist.

Later years

Cox continued to paint, teach and write until his death on March 17, 1919. Kenyon Cox died in his New York home from pneumonia. A significant body of Cox's personal and professional papers, including extensive correspondence, is held in the Department of Drawings & Archives at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University in New York City.

Selected works After Boltraffio, "Sacre Conversazione", (oil on canvas) 1878–1882, owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Study for Mosaic, Wisconsin State Capital, "Justice", (oil on canvas) 1913, owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Mural at Oberlin College, "The Spirit of Self-Sacrificing Love", 1914 "The Sword is Drawn The Navy Uphold it!" United States Navy recruitment poster, 1917

Select writings Old Masters and New, 1905 Painters and Sculptors, 1907 Concerning Painting: Considerations Theoretical and Historical, 1917