John Rogers Cox
Encyclopedia
John Rogers Cox was an American painter from Terre Haute, Indiana. His style and subject matter align him with the Regionalist (American scene painting) and Magic Realist landscape tradition.

Early life and education

Cox was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1915. His father, Wilson Naylor Cox, was president of the Terre Haute National Bank, later Terre Haute First National Bank. John Rogers was one of four brothers, Wilson Naylor "W.N." Cox, Jr., the eldest, born in 1909, Francis "Fritz" Gardenhire Cox, the next oldest born two years later, and twins John Rogers and Benjamin Guille born on March 24, 1915. Cox's parents sent him to the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 to study business but he later enrolled in a Bachelor of Fine Arts
Bachelor of Fine Arts
In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...

 program conducted jointly by the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He graduated in 1938. After failing to find a commercial arts job in New York he returned to Terre Haute and found work as a bank messenger and later a teller. He married Mary Hermine Mayer, a Terre Haute local, on December 27, 1939, and they eventually had three children, two sons, John Rogers Cox, Jr. and Henry Douglas Cox and a daughter, Janet Naylor Cox, born in 1943 who died in childhood.

Career

Cox left his job at the bank in 1941 and was appointed the first director of the newly formed Sheldon Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute having been offered the position by William T. Turman, professor of art at Indiana State Teachers College
Indiana State Teachers College
Indiana State Teachers College may refer to former names of:*Indiana University of Pennsylvania from 1927 to 1959*Indiana State University from 1929 to 1965...

, a recognized artist and chief adviser to the Swope. Cox, describing Turman's job offer, said
"When I heard the word 'painting' and when he offered me $600 a year more than I was making, it didn't take me more than a minute to say yes!"

At 26, he was the youngest museum director in the U.S. Cox assembled the Swope's founding collection purchasing 23 paintings by living American artists in the 15 months before the inaugural show which contained new works by artists such as Grant Wood
Grant Wood
Grant DeVolson Wood was an American painter, born four miles east of Anamosa, Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century.- Life and career :His family moved to Cedar Rapids after his...

, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Burchfield, Zoltan Sepeshy and Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...

. The museum opened to the public on March 21, 1942. The founding collection is still the feature for which the museum is best known.

Cox left the museum and enlisted in the US Army in 1943. He left the army in 1945 and decided to dedicate his time to painting. By 1948, Cox had completed nine paintings, sold seven, and won two important prizes. Life magazine
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....

 included a double page color feature about Cox in its July 12, 1948 edition. The article included his painting Wheat and a self-portrait. Cox moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 in 1948 after the death of his daughter and the break-up of his marriage the previous year. He remained in Chicago, teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago until 1965 where he specialized in figure drawing. After 1950 he focused on producing pen and pencil drawings rather than oil paintings.

Later life

Cox eventually remarried and moved from Chicago to New Orleans, then to Wenatchee, Washington
Wenatchee, Washington
Wenatchee is located in North Central Washington and is the largest city and county seat of Chelan County, Washington, United States. The population within the city limits in 2010 was 31,925...

, and finally to Louisville, Kentucky, where he died on January 30, 1990 at the age of 74.

Works

Cox's output as an artist was relatively modest but his works featured in numerous important annual living artist exhibitions during the 1940s and '50s. He worked slowly, painting his landscapes at home, from memory, often taking a year or two to finish a painting. His paintings number fewer than 20.

Gray and Gold (1942)

One of Cox's best known works is Gray and Gold from 1942, held in the permanent collection Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum situated in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 43,000...

. The painting was produced shortly after the United States joined the Second World War. It was Cox's second oil painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art bought the painting from a traveling exhibition, 'Artists for Victory', consisting of works by artists who wanted to help in the war effort. The exhibition opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 (The Met) in New York on December 7, 1942, the first anniversary of attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...

 and Cox's painting was awarded the Second Medal. The work also received the Popular Prize in the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh's annual 'Painting in the United States' 1944 exhibition of paintings by living artists.

White Cloud (1943)

Cox's painting White Cloud was exhibited at the 1944, Painting in the United States Carnegie survey show and won a 300 US dollar prize. Life magazine covered the exhibition and noted "Some critics believe that his stark landscapes will make him as famous as the late Grant Wood
Grant Wood
Grant DeVolson Wood was an American painter, born four miles east of Anamosa, Iowa. He is best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly the painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century.- Life and career :His family moved to Cedar Rapids after his...

". Cox painted White Cloud in 1943, adding further details in 1946. The work was acquired by the Swope Art Museum in 2000. The painting depicts a dry and desolate landscape, with two trees and a barren field. An abandoned plow sits in the foreground and a large house can be seen in the distance. Brian Lee Whisenhunt, the Swope's director, noted "Despite the weathered and desolate scene, hope remains: a white cloud, voluptuous and full of promised rain, floats above the dry and parched landscape connoting a potentially better future." The painting was included in the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...

's To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America exhibition in 2011.

Cloud Trails (1944)

Cox's 1944 painting, Cloud Trails, consists of a landscape of precisely painted wheat stalks devoid of human figures under an expanse of blue sky with cloud trails and a full moon near the horizon. A barn in the landscape is covered with brightly colored advertisement
Barn advertisement
A barn advertisement is an outdoor advertisement painted onto the exterior of a roadside barn. Barn advertisers take advantage of the barns' prominence in rural landscapes, paying their owners for the right to paint and maintain logos and slogans on them...

s typical of the artist's Midwestern hometown. The painting was purchased by the Saint Louis Art Museum
Saint Louis Art Museum
The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the principal U.S. art museums, visited by up to a half million people every year. Admission is free through a subsidy from the cultural tax district for St. Louis City and County.Located in Forest Park in St...

 in 2006 who describe it as one of Cox's "unsettling American Scene landscapes".

Wheat Fields (1949)

Cox's 1949 painting, Wheat Fields, uses a highly saturated palette of pinks, blues and oranges to portray what the Norton Museum of Art described as "a Midwestern version of a garden of plenty with an endlessly extended crop field". The painting was purchased by the Norton Museum in 2008.

Wheat Shocks (1951)

Cox only produced one lithograph, Wheat Shocks (1951). A signed print
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...

 produced from the lithograph is held in the Cleveland Museum of Art's collection.

Exhibitions

Work by Cox was included in the Indianapolis Museum of Art
Indianapolis Museum of Art
The Indianapolis Museum of Art is an encyclopedic art museum located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The museum, which underwent a $74 million expansion in 2005, is located on a campus on the near northwest area outside downtown Indianapolis, northwest of Crown Hill Cemetery.The...

's 63rd Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings, in 1951. The Sheldon Swope Gallery held a John Rogers Cox retrospective exhibition in 1982 on its 40th anniversary. The museum currently holds five works by Cox, including a self-portrait drawn in pencil and his portrait of William T. Turman.

Critical reception

The art historian, John I.H. Baur, described Cox's work as an exemplar of "hard, immaculate-related realism" in his 1951 study Revolution and Tradition in Modern American Art for the Library of Congress. Michael D. Hall, describing Cox's work in an essay to accompany the Flint Institute of Arts
Flint Institute of Arts
The Flint Institute of Arts, also called FIA, is located in the Flint Cultural Center in downtown Flint, Michigan. It offers exhibitions, interpretive programs, film screenings, concerts, lectures, family events and educational outreach programs to people of various ages, serving over 120,000...

's exhibition in 2003, Great Lakes Muse: American Scene Painting from the Upper Midwest, 1910 - 1960, said "His own signature landscape vistas are imaginary Midwestern places filled with emptiness-visual contradictions suffused with momentous and ominous signs."

Cox on painting and his own work

Cox claimed to know nothing about painting in an interview for Life magazine in July, 1948. He said that he intended to continue painting because he enjoyed it, adding "I'm too dumb to do anything else". Cox regarded the effect of painting as somewhat mysterious.
Cox was interviewed about his work by the American Artist magazine in October 1951. He said the following about his working method.

List of works

  • Gray and Gold, 1942, oil on canvas, 91.5 by 151.8 cm (36 by 59.8 in), Cleveland Museum of Art.
  • White Cloud, 1943 (some details added by Cox in 1946), oil and acrylic on canvas, 37 by 45.5 in (94 by 115.6 cm), Swope Art Museum Collection.
  • Cloud Trails, 1944, oil on canvas, Saint Louis Art Museum.
  • Tall Grass, c. 1945, sold to a Washington, D.C.
    Washington, D.C.
    Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

    , collector in 1945.
  • Wheat, 1946, awarded the 1946 Carnegie Popular Prize, purchased by the National Bank of New York City.
  • Approaching Storm, 1947, oil on canvas, 18 by 26 in (45.7 by 66 cm)
  • The Meadow, 1948, oil on canvas, exhibited at the "Fifty Third Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity Art" held by the Institute of Chicago in 1949. The painting's price was $600.
  • Wheat Fields, 1949, oil on canvas, 31 by 45 in (78.7 by 114.3 cm), Norton Museum of Art.
  • Untitled, 1950, oil on board
  • Wheat Shocks, 1951, lithograph, Cleveland Museum of Art.
  • July, Michele & Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts

External links

  • "Less is more" - Detailed examination and conservation project for White Cloud, Christina O'Connell, Indianapolis Museum of Art.
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