Boys Fishing

Summary

A bright landscape scene, looking along a length of a river, with meadows to either side, and some cattle in the background standing in the water. There are two boys on the right bank in foreground, fishing, accompanied by black and white dog.

Display Label

Boys Fishing 1849 David Cox 1783-1859 Oil on panel Swallows fly low under an expansive sky as two boys spend a summer’s day fishing. The uninterrupted view and the childhood pastime give this painting a nostalgic feel, as if we are looking back over the years to the endless happy summers of our youth. However, Boys Fishing did not please everyone. One critic wrote of a David Cox exhibition in 1849: ‘If you want to rail at a veteran for slobbery, want of form, and mere clever smudges of paint, go to his Boys Fishing…’ To be fair, Cox was a veteran of watercolour painting, and only took up the medium of oil in 1839. Jesse Haworth bequest 1937.127