Book of Pictures
1910-1917
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Allyn Cox
Accession Number
1959.10.2
Tags
About this artwork
Kenyon Cox was as much an art critic as a painter. He contributed articles to prestigious magazines such as The Nation and Scribnerâs, and much of his writing dealt with the power of art to speak a universal language. His Raphael-inspired Book of Pictures, of a mother showing her child an illustrated book, represents this conviction. In the early years of the twentieth century, many Americans learned about European art through mass-produced images in books and magazines. Cox advocated using su...
About the Artist
Kenyon Cox · 1856–1919
Kenyon Cox (1856–1919) was born on October 27 in Warren, Ohio, to General Jacob Dolson Cox, a prominent politician and Civil War veteran, and Helen Finney Cox. Despite fragile health, young Cox pursued art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati before advancing to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1877, he traveled to Paris, studying first under Carolus-Duran, then at the Éco...