The Young Artist's Companion or Drawing Book of Studies in Landscape Painting. With Thirteen Coloured Plates

London: S. and J. Fuller, 1825. Oblong folio, 262 x 213 mms., pp. 15 [16 blank], engraved coloured frontispiece and 12 other coloured plates at end of volume, 39 uncoloured plates, 12 aquatint plates, contemporary half roan, marbled boards (very worn), leather label on front cover; previous bookseller's note stating "Replacement title/ Lacking one Plate," plates a bit soiled and foxed at extremities, front hinge broken with cover just holding on, a fair copy only, but he colour plates are fine. The artist and landscape painter David Cox (1783 - 1859) produced a number of manuals to teach drawing, so many in fact, that Stephen Wildman in his ODNB article on Cox affirms that the books were so influential that "they had the unforeseen consequence of training a whole generation of amateurs to imitate his style." His reputation had its ups and downs, but he was often compared to Constable and Turner. In the late 1850s there were several exhibitions of his works, leading the Art Journal to remark, "We have sometimes heard people say they cannot understand Cox [and] pity that they could not inhale the sweet breath of his hayfields and purple heaths, nor see the rushing of his summer showers, nor repose with him under the shadows of his thick umbrageous elms and his graceful ash-trees. Not understand Cox!, why there is hardly a peasant in the land who goes to his daily toil by the hedgerows, or in the fields, who could not thoroughly feel the truth and beauty of his landscapes."