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Kenyon Cox
Born:
Warren, Ohio 1856
Died:
New York, New York 1919
Active in:
- Windsor, Vermont
Photo Caption:
Kenyon Cox, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001409.
Photo Caption:
Kenyon Cox, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Allyn Cox 1983.31.1.
“. . . art is not a luxury, it is a civilization.” Kenyon Cox, The Nation, 1889, quoted in Morgan, Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919: A Life in American Art, 1994
Biography
Born in Ohio, studied in Paris, lived mostly in New York City. Painter who wrote extensively about art. His sensuous female nudes were beautifully rendered but were somewhat shocking to the public of his day; later he found wider acceptance as a creator of allegorical murals.
Charles Sullivan, ed American Beauties: Women in Art and Literature (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with National Museum of American Art, 1993)
Additional Biographies
Kenyon Cox was born into a prominent midwestern family of theologians, lawyers, and politicians. Despite poor health and his mother’s concerns for his welfare, Cox took art courses, hoping one day to combine his artistic talent with his family’s commitment to social service. He studied in Paris from 1877 until 1882, when he moved to New York to work as an illustrator and art critic. Within ten years Cox was accepting mural commissions for such prestigious institutions as the Library of Congress and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. These projects helped realize his hopes that art could serve an educational purpose. (Morgan, Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919: A Life in American Art, 1994)
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