Journey Home

In this sweeping view across an English plain, market women move away from us towards a distantly glimpsed coastline. Bright colors distinguish the dress of women travellers who pass near men who plow a field with a team of horses. Overhead, dark clouds and circling gulls signal approaching rain. Cox was born in Birmingham and moved to London in 1804 to study with John Varley. In 1813–14 he published a "Treatise on Landscape Painting and Effect in Watercolours." After a period of financial struggle occasioned by the ecomomic depression that followed the Napoleonic Wars, the artist found success from the late eighteen-twenties and became one of Britain's leading landscape painters. He exhibited works, such as "Journey Home," at the Society of Painters in Water Colours and found appreciative patrons that supported his distinct vision.