Artist

Kenyon Cox

born Warren, OH 1856-died New York City 1919
Media - J0001409_1b.jpg - 87625
Kenyon Cox, © Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0001409
Born
Warren, Ohio, United States
Died
New York, New York, United States
Active in
  • Windsor, Vermont, United States
Nationalities
  • American
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)

Luce Artist Biography

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)

Exhibitions

An artwork image of a woman
Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano 
October 8, 2021May 8, 2022
This exhibition brings to life the Venetian glass revival of the nineteenth century on the famed island of Murano and the artistic experimentation the city inspired for artists such as John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler.