The Cross Roads 1850

Editor: Here we have "The Cross Roads," painted by David Cox in 1850. It’s a watercolour piece and the colours seem so muted and melancholic. The composition really draws the eye up into the stormy sky. What do you find most striking about it? Curator: Well, isn’t it atmospheric? You almost feel the wind whipping across that open landscape. For me, it's the sheer breadth of emotion Cox manages to capture with what, on the surface, looks like a simple genre scene. You see the small figures against this vast, almost Turner-esque sky, and it's about more than just cattle driving – it's about humanity’s place in the grand scheme. Do you pick up on that feeling of insignificance tinged with resilience? Editor: I do see it. It’s kind of intimidating. Those clouds are so heavy. How much of this piece should be attributed to the Romantic era of landscape painting? Curator: Ah, that's the crux of it, isn’t it? Cox straddles that line beautifully. The romantic impulse is definitely there in the dramatic rendering of nature. But he tempers it with this very real, everyday depiction of rural life. It is a pure impression - maybe one of the earliest plein-air landscape paintings, catching the immediate emotional reaction of the moment in the fields. It becomes more real. I find that compelling. Editor: So, it's like a Romantic sensibility grounded in a realistic portrayal? I hadn’t thought of it that way before. Curator: Exactly! He is more than just capturing the view: he catches the feeling. It is quite wonderful, isn’t it, how a simple watercolour can contain such a world of feeling? Editor: It really is. I’ll never look at a landscape quite the same way again.