An American Art Student in Paris: The Letters of Kenyon Cox, 1877-1882

When I first discovered Kenyon Cox's magazine articles and essays, they were revelatory. As a well-trained painter, one who matured in the hothouse environment of the Parisian ateliers of Carlous-Duran and Jean-Leon Gerome, he knew how to draw and paint. This gave his writing the ring of truth, the understanding that many other art critics lacked. While Cox emphatically argued for classical ideals in art, insisting that there was a common criterion by which paintings could be judged, I found him to be fair and give credit where credit was due. He always argued that the greatest art - such as Michelangelo, Veronese, Leonardo - was based on the highest ideals and hefelt that for the most part, the modern movements were just not of the same consequence. Cox was indefatigable. He wrote prolifically and, as an artist, he assembled a considerable oeuvre of easel paintings and completed murals all over the East and Midwestern United States. Cox came from a distinguished family. His father was a Civil War general, the Governor of Ohio and one of the few men in Grant's cabinet who was not touched by scandal. Cox was a sickly young man and, once he discovered his passion for art, it would not be deterred. He studied at home in Ohio, then in Philadelphia, and then it was off to Europe with a hundred dollar a month allowance, where became fast friends with Theodore Robinson and a number of other young American expatriates. Cox matriculated first in the studio of the portrait painter Carolus-Duran, then the Academie Julian and finally, in the atelier of Jean-Leon Gerome, where he found his true home. He wrote beautiful letters home, which provide an invaluable window into the art world of the day and his own progress in it. These letters are the subjects of this book, which has been carefully edited and annotated by H. Wayne Morgan, who has made something of a career of Kenyon Cox. If you want real insights into what it was like to study in Paris in the years after the Civil War and to understand the era better, this is a book that is worth reading.