David Cox Snr (1783–1859)

Watercolour over pencil, 20.5 x 33 cm (8 x 13 in), Circa 1830.

Gilpin was bemused by Wales and found it difficult to apply his notions of the picturesque to the mountain scenery. Cox had no such difficulty. Profiting from his experience as a scene painter he arranges the composition in three planes, the mountains forming an effective backdrop to the intervening plain and the central grouping of figures. The use of emerald green on the coat of the dismounted traveller is a device frequently employed by Cox in his figure drawing. The tonal effects are well judged, with the light on the mountains and the reflection of the sky in the water made all the more intense by the contrast of darker tones in the middle ground.