Identity:

Kenyon Cox was a painter, illustrator and critic.

Life:

Cox studied firstly at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1876–7). and afterwards in Paris with Carolus-Duran and Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. A trip to Italy inspired in him a lifelong attachment to the Italian Renaissance and its civic values and he believed in art as a unifying social and moral force. His skill as an academic draughtsman led to numerous commissions for mural decoration, notably his four murals for the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building of the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893 in Chicago. He spent the rest of his career in America where he taught at at the Art Students League in New York (1884-1909), wrote art criticism (Old Masters and New: Essays in Art Criticism, 1905) and was also a successful illustrator.

Bibliography:

Morgan, H. Wayne, 'Kenyon Cox,' The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy, http://www.groveart.com (accessed 9 June 2004).