Landscape, Stirling Castle

David Cox was an important figure in the golden age of watercolour, which ran from about 1750 to 1850.
He was one of the most important members of the Birmingham School of landscape artists and is considered one of the greatest English landscape painters and an early precursor of Impressionism.
His work is concerned with capturing fleeting changes in atmosphere and light. He captured the character of a scene by employing generalisation above detail. Later work from 1841 onwards shows a simplification and abstraction and freedom of expression comparable to that found in Impressionism.