Artist of the American Renaissance : The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1883-1919

Cox, Kenyon; Morgan, H. Wayne (EDT)

ISBN 10: 0873385179 / ISBN 13: 9780873385176

Published by The Kent State University Press, 1995

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 2314633-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Artist of the American Renaissance : The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1883-1919
• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0873385179
• ISBN 13: 9780873385176
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Kenyon Cox was born in Warren, Ohio, in 1856 to a nationally prominent family. He studied as an adolescent at the McMicken Art School in Cincinnati and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. From 1877 to 1882, he was enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and then in 1883 he moved to New York city, where he earned his living as an illustrator for magazines and books and showed easel works in exhibitions. He eventually became a leading painter in the classical style―particularly of murals in state capitols, courthouses, and other major buildings―and one of the most important traditionalist art critics in the United States.An Artist of the American Renaissance is a collection of Cox’s private correspondence from his years in New York City and the companion work to editor H. Wayne Morgan’s An American Art Student in Paris: The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1877-1882 (Kent State University Press, 1986). These frank, engaging, and sometimes naïve and whimsical letters show Cox’s personal development as his career progressed. They offer valuable comments on the inner workings of the American art scene and describe how the artists around Cox lived and earned incomes. Travel, courtship of the student who became his wife, teaching, politics of art associations, the process of painting murals, the controversy surrounding the depiction of the nude, promotion of the new American art of his day, and his support of a modified classical ideal against the modernism that triumphed after the 1913 Armory Show are among the subjects he touched upon.Cox’s letters are little known and have never before been published. This collection will appeal to those with an interest in late-19th-century American architecture, art and culture, mural painting, art criticism and the history of Ohio.

About the Author

H. Wayne Morgan (1934 2014) was a noted historian, author, and longtime University of Oklahoma professor of history and administrator. He wrote and edited numerous articles and books, including "William McKinley and His America" and "New Muses: Art in American Culture, 1865 1920".

Kenyon Cox (1856-1919) was an American painter, writer and teacher. His work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He is the author of several books--including "Old Masters and New" and "Concerning Painting: Considerations Theoretical and Historical"--and criticism appearing in The Nation, Century and Scribner's magazines.