creatively, twilight is a mysterious time, when passions become stronger or enable a moment of...
TRANSCRIPT
Creatively, twilight is a mysterious time,
when passions become stronger
or enable a moment of disguise.
David Cox, Darley Churchyard, 1858
Worcester City museum collection
James Whistler, an American artist and author,
argued that the artist was more powerful than
nature
in his Ten O’Clock lecture on 20 February 1885
at the Prince's Hall Piccadilly, London:
James Abbott McNeill Whistler Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea, 1871
Tate Gallery go to painting details and image
“... when the evening mist clothes the riverside
with poetry, as with a veil,
and the poor buildings
lose themselves in the dim sky,”
Vincent Van Gogh Coal Barges, 1888
Museo Thyssen Bornemisza go to painting details and image
“... and the tall chimneys become campanili,
and the warehouses are palaces in the
night,
and the whole city hangs in the heavens,
and fairy-land is before us –“
Egon Schiele Sinking Sun, 1913
Leopold Museum go to painting details and image
“... the wise man and the one of pleasure,
the working man and the cultured one,
cease to understand, as they have ceased to
see,”
Edward Hopper Gas, 1940
MoMA go to painting details and image
“... and Nature, who for once has sung in tune,
sings her exquisite song to the artist alone.”
Wolfgang Tillmans I Don’t Want to Get Over You, 2000
Editions in the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
go to photograph details and image
In Cox’s watercolour,the gravedigger works in the gloaming.
Does the twilight speak of a journeybetween this world and the next?
Or is Cox using the darkness topaint a story about the man himself?
What do you think?
David Cox, Darley Churchyard, 1858
Worcester City museum collection
This watercolour of Darley Churchyard was one of David
Cox’s last paintings and the one he considered his best.
Born in Birmingham, Cox (1783-1859) was a master of the
watercolour medium and is considered second only to
Constable as a portrayer of the British landscape and
weather.
The images linked to in this slideshow are for personal research use only.
For reproduction enquiries refer to the appropriate collectionor contact [email protected] for advice.