By the 1830s, David Cox had begun to develop a loose, fluid style that was accentuated by his choice of paper. Peter Bower has noted, “Cox liked papers that allowed him to work fast with a heavily loaded brush.”¹ Cox often used a strong wrapping paper, which he referred to as “Scotch” paper, and other rough-surfaced paper, as in this textured sheet of oatmeal paper, relishing in the intricate subtleties of individual sheets of handmade paper.² Such papers did not lend themselves to detailed brushwork and flat washes due to their coarse grain and high absorbency, but they appealed to Cox’s interest in experimentation and pushing watercolor to its fullest potential.

Cox had an established reputation as a watercolorist when he moved in 1841 to Harborne, a village on the outskirts of Birmingham. He abandoned his occupation as a drawing master but remaining financially secure through his commissions and sale of exhibition watercolors. He still went annually to London in the spring to attend the exhibitions, followed by sketching trips. Wales had been a travel destination for the artist since early in his career, and he provided images for Thomas Roscoe’s two volumes of Wanderings and Excursions in North Wales & Wanderings and Excursions in South Wales; Including the Scenery of the River Wye.³ Between 1842 and 1856, in the summer or autumn, he visited the picturesque village of Betws-y-Coed in Caernarfonshire, North Wales, known for its rugged scenery, not too distant from Snowdon. Cox wrote of the village in 1845: “There the three rivers unite very near the village, all fine, rocky, and some good timber on the banks besides other scenery which will turn to very good account.”⁴

This bold, expressive watercolor on a grand vertical sheet was selected for the 1847 exhibition at the Society of Painters in Water Colours in London. In it, Cox applied broad washes of color to achieve atmospheric effects and enliven the composition. Standing on Pont-y-Pair, an early bridge built around 1500, Cox looks downstream of the River Llugwy, a tributary of the River Conwy, toward the mountains to the east.⁵ In this windswept, rocky scene, water flowing down the slope passes around a large boulder in the river’s center, forming a small rapid. An injured shepherd holding a long staff attempts to hail travelers in a wagon with a team of horses on the road above. His dog struggles to save two sheep that cling to a long tree branch to avoid being swept away by the swift current and over a waterfall just downstream of this spot in the river. —Dena M. Woodall