David Cox (1783-1859) – North Wales, stormy seacape, nr Great Orme

Stormy seascape, nr Great Orme (1842)  – David Cox.

English School monochrome watercolour – one of Cox's defining works. (code SN5-538,2). 

David Cox (1783-1859) was a founder of the British and English schools of watercolour painting. Together with Turner, Peter De Wint, John Varley, Copley Fielding, Constable, and John Sell Cotman, Cox cultivated an immediate style of capturing nature. He influenced the land reformist poets and artists who followed, in particular: John Ruskin, William Morris and William Blake.

Two of Cox's watercolours were bought by the Marquis of Conynha for Queen Victoria.

Ruskin, Turner's greatest admirer, said: "there is not any other landscape which comes near these works of David Cox in simplicity or seriousness".

Cox was best known for his atmospheric and dramatic landscapes, particularly those capturing the Welsh coast that dwarfed man's efforts to tame it. 

His decision to reduce detail in his works from 1840, enhanced his ability to capture detail.

This 1842 watercolour is an early example of Impressionism later adopted by the French – used in a fiercely dramatic scene, full of detail that cannot be captured conventionally. Cox used mono wash to capture drama and light.

Dated 1842 in the lower left corner, the watercolour was one of the earliest shifts in Cox's work to simplification and abstraction. He introduces speed and boldness to strip down detail so the work is more reminiscent of impressionism when studied up close. When seen from distance, the scene brims with detail and white light. 

Cox's techniques were copied by Constable and others. Ruskin described the abstraction of detail as working "like magic" in his first edition of Modern Painters in 1943. 

Cox features tiny fishing boats on beach at high and stormy tide, against a backdrop of limestone, white wash and ominous clouds. He emphasises the contrasting element of rocky bay, turbulent sea and relatively calm sky.

The fishing boats, subtle, vulnerable and almost unnoticed, are pulled onto the beach as a final nod to Cox's respect for the power and immense scale of the wild scene.