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David Cox, 1783–1859, British, Pirate's Isle, 1826
- Title:
Pirate's Isle
- Date:
- 1826
- Medium:
- Watercolor with stopping out, and scraping out on moderately thick slightly textured cream wove paper
- Dimensions:
- Sheet: 30 3/4 x 42 1/2 inches (78.1 x 108 cm)
- Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Signed and dated, lower left: "david Cox. 1826."
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
- Copyright Status:
- Public Domain
- Accession Number:
- B2006.5
- Classification:
- Drawings & Watercolors
- Collection:
- Prints and Drawings
- Subject Terms:
- boulders | cliffs | costume | geology | gesture | island | knives (weapons) | literary theme | mountains | pirates | rocks (landforms) | science
- Access:
- Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details. - Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:55883
- Export:
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- IIIF Manifest:
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David Cox was a stalwart member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours; he contributed over eight hundred watercolors to its annual exhibitions over forty-eight years. Best known for his images of rural England and Wales, he occasionally tackled historical or literary subjects, imagined in landscape terms. Pirate’s Isle was exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1826. In the exhibition catalogue, Cox appended the lines from Byron’s The Corsair: “A Sail! a Sail! a promised prize to hope! / Her nation—flag— how speaks the telescope?” Gallery label for A Decade of Gifts and Acquisitions (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-06-01 - 2017-08-13)
Unlike J.M. W. Turner, for whom such literary appendages to his exhibited works were frequent and over which he took considerable care, Cox seldom coupled texts with his watercolors: of his more than eight hundred exhibited works, he supplied only five with poetic tags. Carthage: Aeneas and Achates (cat. 33), shown in 1825, was the first; the following year Cox exhibited Pirates' Isle with the following lines from the first canto of Byron's The Corsair: A Sail! a Sail! a promised prize to hope! Her nation - flag - how speaks the telescope? Within a cove overshadowed by a dramatic geologic formation, Cox presents a band of pirates gesturing toward the distant sail. The watercolor was purchased from the SPWC exhibition by Lord Northwick for 40 guineas. Scott Wilcox Scott Wilcox, Sun, wind, and rain : the art of David Cox, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008, pg. 166, t. no. 34, NJ18 .C829 W542 + Oversize (YCBA)
A Decade of Gifts and Acquisitions (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-06-01 - 2017-08-13) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]
Sun, Wind, and Rain - The Art of David Cox (Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, 2009-01-31 - 2009-05-03) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]
Sun, Wind, and Rain - The Art of David Cox (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-10-16 - 2009-01-04) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]
Scott Wilcox, Sun, wind, and rain : the art of David Cox, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008, pp. 10, 36, 106-7, 166, no. 34, fig. 65, NJ18 .C829 W542 + Oversize (YCBA) [YCBA]
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