A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF
Abraham Johannes Comvenberg, was bom at the
Hague in 1814, and died at Amsterdam in 1845.
He was a pupil of F. L. Huygens and of Taiirel.
Besides engraving some portraits, lie began a plate
of ' Mignon and her Father,' after Ary SchefEer,
which was finished by Alplionse Fran9ois, and
another after G. Don's ' Menagere Hollandaise,'
which was completed by J. W. Kuiser.
COVYN, Reinier and Isrel, were two brothers, who were natives of Brabant, and flourished at Dordrecht about the middle of the seventeenth century. The elder, Reinier, painted market women, with dead game, vegetables, flowers, fruit, &c. A landscape, by him, is in the Brunswick Gallery. Isrel, the younger, attempted history, but was more successful in portraits. Neither of them went beyond mediocrity.
CO WEN, William, was a landscape painter, wlm exhibited views in Ireland at the British Institution in 1823, and sent landscape scenes in Switzerland. Itah', and France to the Academy until 1839. In 1824 he published a series of sis Italian and Swiss views, and in 1848 ' Six Weeks in Corsica,' with etchings by himself.
COWPEK, Douglas, was born at Gibraltar in 1817. When seventeen years of age he won from his parents — who were unwilling to allow him to become a painter — a reluctant consent to his leaving home, and making his way to London, he obtained admission to the Royal Academy schools, and soon carried off the silver medal for the best copy in painting. His first exhibited works, produced when only twenty years of age, were a portrait and the ' Last Inter- view,' followed in 1838 by ' Shylock, Antonio and Bassanio,' and in 1839" by his master-piece, 'Othello relating his Adventures.' He exhibited no more at the Academy, and he painted but five more pictures, four of which be sent to the Suffolk Street Gallery. He died in Guernsey in 1839, at the early age of twenty-two, having lived only just long enough to justify his own determination to be an artist, and to show the world what great things he might have done.
COX, David, an eminent landscape painter both in water-colours and in oil, was born at Deritend, Birmingham, on the 29th of April, 1783. As a boy, he was taught to wield the large hammer used in his father's trade, that of a whitesmith ; but, as his mother feared he was too delicate for this work, he was apprenticed in 1798 to a maker of lockets and brooches, which he adorned with miniature designs. He studied drawing at a night school kept by Mr. Joseph Barker (q.v.). He was, how- ever, not very long engaged in this field of industry, for his master died soon after he was apprenticed. He next obtained employment as a colour-grinder to the scene-painters of the Binnini;ham Theatre, then under the management of the elder Macready. From this subordinate post he very soon rose to assist in the painting of scenes, and on one occasion designed and executed the entire scenery for a new play about to be produced. On the public announcement of the piece, however, he was disap- pointed at seeing the whole credit of his share in its production given to an imaginary artist of London fame, and remonstrated against being thus robbed of his well-earned honours. Cox did not remain much longer connected with the management of the Birraingliam and Leicester theatres. In 1804 he came to London, and for a time obtained employment in the scenic depart- ment at Astley's Theatre, but only as a temporary resource till other arrangements more suited to his habits, which were of a homely turn, could be made. In London he received a few lessons in water-colour painting from John Varley. Shortly after, he retired into private life, and made a scanty income by teaching drawing, principally at schools, and by making sketches, which he sold for a few shillings each, but which are now worth more than as many pounds. At length a wealthy patron appeared who sought him out in his humble retreat at Dulwich, and from this point his fortunes began to move in advance. His pupils increased in number, and in remunerativeness, and his sketches began to command higher prices. In 1805 he took his first trip into North Wales, and visited some of the most romantic spots of the Principality, which was ever afterwards his favourite haunt.
David Cox was elected a member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1813, and in the j'ear following he was appointed a teacher at the Military College at Farnham. This occupation, however, did not suit him, and, probably for the sake of the surrounding scenery, ho removed to Hereford in 1814, where he was drawing-master in a ladies' school, and in the same year published a 'Treatise on Landscape Painting and EfTect in Water-Colours.' He returned again to London in 1827, but finally retired to Harborne, near Birming- ham, in 1841, where he resided until his death, which occurred on the 7th of June, 1859.
Although best known by his water-colour draw- ings, David Cox painted also in oil. He first began to use this medium in 1839, in which year he received some lessons from Villiam Miiller. The total number of his oil pictures has been estimated by competent judges at a little over one hundred, of which fifty-seven were exhibited at Liverpool in 1875. Several of them were sold in the Gillot sale in 1872 for very large amounts. His best works in oil, and the dates at which they were executed, are as follow;
Outskirts of a Wood. 1S43. Washing Day. IPtS. Caer Cenneu Castle. lS4t. Vale of Clwyd. 1S46 and 1848. Peace and War. 1S46. Lancaster Castle. 1846. Old Mill at Bettws. 1847. {Bury Art Gallery.) Counting the Flock. 1S47. Changing Pasture. 1S47. (Birmingham Art Galhry.) Collecting the Flocks. 1848. Going to the Hayfitld. 1849. The Skvlark. lS4y. The Welsh Funeral, 1850. Rhyl Sands. 1S54-5. {Birminyham Art Gallery.) Skirts of the Forest. 1855-6. (Birminyham Art Gallery.) The finest among the innumerable drawings which David Cox produced in the course of his fifty years' practice of art may also here be mentioned :
Cader Idris. 1828. T^ncaster Sands. 1835. Ulverstone Sands. 1835. Hardwick Hall (three interior vieus). 1S39. The Stubble-field with Gleaners. 1843. Bolsover Castle. 1843. The Flood at Corwen. 1846. The Outsk'rts of a Forest. 1846. Caer Cenneu Castle (the ' Kain Cloud'). 1847. Windsor Park. 1846. Bolton Abbey. 1847.
The Skylark. 1848.
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