David Cox, R.W.S.

With Christopher Powney, London, by 1966,

by whom sold in 1966 to Walter Brandt (1902-1978),

by family descent until,

their sale, London, Sotheby's, 8 July 2011, lot 271,

where acquired by the present owner (£17,500)

David Cox was one of the most celebrated landscape painters working in Britain in the first half of the 19^th century. Although a master of capturing the weather effects on rural landscapes, his pictures were very often populated by figures. Indeed, in preparation for 'exhibition standard' watercolours, Cox would create rapidly executed studies, taken directly from the life, of people that interested him. The present work is unusual, for it has been worked up to a particularly high state of finish and it shows the principal subject - the farmer - firmly in the foreground. Cox achieves a superb sense of light and atmosphere here, qualities that are heightened thanks to the watercolour's fine state of preservation.