PAUL COX. A JOURNEY THROUGH HIS ART

C L O U X A P TH

A J O U R N EY GH H I S A U O R R

T

C L O U X A P AJ

OU R

N EY TH R O U G H H

CHRIS BEETLES 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6QB Telephone 020 7839 7551 Facsimile 020 7839 1603 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com

R A S I

T

Copyright © Chris Beetles Ltd 2013 8 & 10 Ryder Street St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com www.chrisbeetles.com ISBN 978-1-905738-60-1 Cataloguing in publication data is available from the British Library Researched, written and edited by David Wootton, with contributions from Alexander Beetles, Graydon Carter and Cullen Murphy Editorial assistance from Catherine Andrews Design by Jeremy Brook of Graphic Ideas Photography by Julian Huxley-Parlour Reproduction by www.cast2create.com Colour separation and printing by Geoff Neal Litho Limited Front cover: Piazza Navona [119] Front endpaper: A Victorian Summer [12] Frontispiece: Paul Cox in Rome, 2011 Title page: The Larkins’ Ice Creams [48] Title verso: The Writer’s Imagination [66] Page 6: New York [155] Page 7: Nantucket Vines [186] Page 8: Chain and Anchor [187] Page 9: New York Life [167] Page 10: Piccadilly Circus [05] Page 12: London Property Boom [14] Page 109: Paul Cox in Rome, 2011 Back endpaper: Grand Central Terminal – NY [154] Back cover: The man behind the counter, as kindly a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the moment we hove in view [102]

CONTENTS Performance Artist 7 Cullen Murphy and Graydon Carter

Chronology of Life and Work 11 Alexander Beetles and David Wootton

1:1 Britain: London 13

1:2 Britain: Life and Landscape 19

1:3 Britain: Literary Ilustrations 31

1:4 Britain: Illustrations to P G Wodehouse 37

2:1 Europe: Rome 55

2:2 Europe: Other Destinations 63

3:1 America and Beyond: New York 71

3:2 America and Beyond: Town & Country and Vanity Fair 79

3:3 America and Beyond: Other American Commissions 83

3:4 America and Beyond: Other Destinations 89 Paul Cox Journeys through his Art 95 An interview with David Wootton

PERFORMANCE ARTIST | 7

Performance Artist

Cullen Murphy and Graydon Carter

You know his work when you see it, and you know it instantly. The images seem animated, the figures unusually supple, the washes light and elegant. The stylistic mood is bright and youthful – some distance beyond callow, yet well shy of midlife crisis – but also strangely timeless. It is a vision of the world as it would be if the job of Creation had been given to Paul Cox – as, in a way, it has been.

A businessman, FT in hand, taking leave of his London tailor. Throngs of pedestrians in Leicester Square. A valet assessing a daffy master with implacable serenity. Picnickers in a touring car, careering among the hairpins. Oblivious young lovers in a Central Park hansom. Bicyclists in natty tweed, shattering the alpine tranquility. The pastoral majesty of a test match at Lords. Bidders lounging on old wicker at a Napa Valley wine auction. A Bentley easing gingerly among tea tables at Ascot. Tumultuous traffic at the feet of Grand Central. Shoppers under the lights of Regent Street during a holiday snowfall. A prosperous couple in the back of a limousine, existing separately together.

Yes, Paul’s England is an England without bad weather, kebab shops, oligarchs, or Philip Green. It’s the England of stately country houses, cantering steeds, careering roadsters, May balls, picnics and punts and carefree afternoons. It’s the England of Bertie and Jeeves, Mapp and Lucia, Toad and Badger, and George, Harris, and Jerome.

There’s a genial humanity in Paul’s work, a quality that gives it currency and will also give it legs, as they say in Hollywood. That quality runs through the 200 works on display in this catalogue – from street scenes of London, New York, and Rome (captured en plein air) to paintings for Folio Society books (those classic editions of Wodehouse) to illustrations for a variety of magazines (as diverse as Blueprint and Vanity Fair).

Everyone knows about the so-called triple state of water – the moment when, at a certain temperature, it improbably exists as a solid, a liquid, and a gas all at the same time. In an equally neat trick, Paul achieves a triple state of illustration: his work combines discernment, send-up, and celebration all at once – too knowing to be merely whimsical, too fun-loving to become mockery, and too sharply observed to slide into complacency.

His career spans nearly four decades, which is hard to believe if you’ve ever crossed paths with the man. He resembles one of the sandy-haired, perpetually 40-ish characters in his own paintings – popping a champagne cork, or scattering chickens with a rusted Land Rover or sipping from a flask on a shooting weekend. Paul’s real self and the painted version not only are in sync but seem preserved at an optimal moment of age – like some bizarre happy version of Dorian Gray.

Paul was born in London in 1957 and studied illustration at Camberwell School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Great draughtsmen and illustrators don’t come late to their vocations, any more than great mathematicians or ballerinas do. The urge manifests early, and in Paul’s case was reinforced by dyslexia: drawing was more immediately rewarding than reading or writing.

He was encouraged by his father, the architect Oliver Cox, a skilled draughtsman and artist in his own right. Another source of inspiration was the artistic imagination of others – the work of illustrators such as Edward Ardizzone and Randolph Caldecott (encountered in children’s books), and, later, the work of Paul Hogarth, David Gentleman, E H Shepard, and Ronald Searle.

8 | PERFORMANCE ARTIST

At Camberwell School of Art, Linda Kitson, perhaps best remembered as the official artist of the Falklands War, taught Paul that illustration can be a form of reportage, and encouraged him to take his sketchpads and capture, on the spot, whatever he saw as he strolled through London: people, yes, but also – a legacy from his father – buildings of all kinds. To this day, buildings are as much characters in Paul’s work as any human figures, and have as much personality. Over the past several decades he has explored both sides of the Atlantic, and his notebooks by themselves would make for a compelling exhibition.

Openness to the immediacy of the moment leaves a stamp on all of Paul’s work. Many of the paintings in the current show took form in the streets of Rome, where as often as not he found himself caught up in the bustle of urban life, becoming part of the scenery: There were always schoolchildren looking at me as I was working. You become quite an attraction – people find what you’re doing very entertaining. It becomes rather more of a shared experience than it is if you just take a photograph and leave. You have to be there for an hour or so, standing, usually in the heat. I rest a very big drawing board on my hip, and I can hold it either vertically or horizontally. It isn’t comfortable, but it means you’re actually at head height with the environment. Also, if you sit down, people will stand over you and get in your way. But if you’re up, it means you can occupy a traffic island and get an immediate sense of figures and activity all around you.

Illustration as reportage: that’s one reason, along with their beauty, why Paul’s paintings work so well in Vanity Fair, a heavily reported magazine where even historical and literary subjects can be made to feel alive and of the moment. For a recent excerpt in the magazine of a new novel by Tom Wolfe, Paul depicted a raucous herd of international billionaires competing to get inside the expensive precincts of Art Basel Miami. For an excerpt in the magazine from Sebastian Faulks’s Devil May Care – the novelist’s recent contribution to the (post-Fleming) James Bond canon – Paul conjured a world of high-stakes tennis among the beau monde of modern Paris. For another Tom Wolfe article – a spirited fantasy about a Master of the Universe on his way down – Paul assumed the mantle of a latter-day William Hogarth, imagining a sybaritic Before the Fall (in a Gulfstream V) and then the squalid indignities of the Day of Reckoning (in commercial economy class).

His published paintings now number in the thousands. He has illustrated at least 25 books for The Folio Society alone – a relationship that goes back to his days at the Royal College of Art, when he took second place in a competition sponsored by the society. (Paul’s entry was a series of illustrations for Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.) Over the years he has appeared in the pages of all the major British broadsheets and their magazine supplements – contributing paintings from southern Spain for The Sunday Times Magazine to accompany stories by the writer Norman Lewis; taking on numerous location assignments with writer Tim Heald for the Telegraph (which included trying – and falling out of – the Cresta bobsled run); and covering the 1997 elections in Britain for the Guardian. His illustrations have appeared in The Spectator, Punch, Country Life, Esquire, Town & Country, and many other publications.

Paul works fast; as a freelancer, which is all he’s ever been, he has to. For years there was a Sussex farmhouse to maintain (it was once the home of the Victorian watercolourist Harold Swanwick); now there is a house in London. Besides book and magazine work he dabbles in posters and stage sets and postage stamps. ‘Oeuvre’ is the kind of word that would surely make him wince.

But, like it or not, he’s got one.

PERFORMANCE ARTIST | 9

In 1957, as Paul Cox arrived in the world, the Grolier Club – a haven of book collectors in Manhattan, and the sort of place that might figure in one of Paul’s paintings – mounted a famous exhibition called ‘Authors at Work’. It consisted of original manuscripts by scores of famous writers, each page heavily scored by revision. The process of an author’s editing revealed something fundamental about the character of the work itself – from the rapid, tempestuous scrawlings of a Tolstoy to the precise and delicate experiments of a Dickinson.

A few years ago, the Monacelli Press and Thames & Hudson published a selection of pages from the notebooks of well-known artists and designers. Paul was prominent among them. Looking at his work, people tend to ask themselves: How does he do it?

The short answer: he draws mainly with his brush, without printed references, and at the speed of a dervish. Whether he is painting life caught on the fly or making illustrations in the studio for a piece of existing text, his sketchpad technique carries over into how he creates the final product. If there’s a vivid immediacy in his paintings – an exultation in the present tense – it finds an exact counterpart in his method: I work on watercolour paper, where the line is worked out first of all, in light pencil, and then the colour applied immediately afterwards. The process is a continual one, because I’ll be thinking about the colour and the general look of the image all the way through. From the initial stage I will have some idea of what I’d like to achieve – for instance, the light in the image, whether it’s going to be daytime or evening. I then apply the watercolour, and I work very quickly, sometimes mixing the colours on the paper.

There’s a kind of an emergency in the actual activity. I like the fear of having it all possibly going really wrong. It’s not like a traditional watercolour approach, where you’re very carefully laying down one wash after another, gradually building up a tonal effect. It all has to look very fresh and spontaneous. It’s a bit of a performance.

And what a performance it is.

Graydon Carter and Cullen Murphy are, respectively, Editor and Editor at Large for Vanity Fair.

CHRONOLOGY OF LIFE AND WORK | 11

Chronology of Life and Work Alexander Beetles and David Wootton 31 July 1957 Born Paul William Cox at Middlesex Hospital, Marylebone, London, the eldest of three children of the architect Oliver Cox CBE. He grew up at 22 Grove Terrace, Dartmouth Park, which remained the family home for over 50 years.

1962-66 Attended Gospel Oak Primary School.

1966-70 Attended Port Regis, Shaftesbury, Dorset.

1970-75 Attended Stanbridge Earls School, Romsey, Hampshire.

1972 Aged 15, won 1st Prize in the National Portraiture Association competition, 15-19 age-group, with Allotment in Provence.

1973 Won 2nd Prize in the National Portraiture Association competition, with a watercolour of Beach at Bonchurch.

1975-76 Took Art Foundation Course at Camberwell School of Art. 1976-79 Studied Graphic Design & Illustration at Camberwell School of Art, under Eileen Hogan and Linda Kitson .

1976 Moved into 2 Arklow House on the Aylesbury Estate, Walworth, London.

1979 Graduated with a First Class Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design & Illustration.

1979-82 Studied Illustration at the Royal College of Art, under Quentin Blake and Peter Brookes. During this time designed and painted the sets for two RCA pantomimes.

1981 While at the RCA, won 2nd Prize in The Folio Society’s annual competition, for illustrations to Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, though they remain unpublished.

1982 Graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA. Published his first work in The Times, The Sunday Times and The Listener.

1982-90 Visiting Lecturer at Camberwell School of Art on the BA in Illustration.

1984 Returned to Grove Terrace, Dartmouth Park, London.

First solo exhibition of watercolours of Jamaica at the Cartoon Gallery, Lambs Conduit Street, London.

Illustrated Jilly Cooper’s The Common Years, Urban Marks’ A Varied Life and The Folio Society’s edition of Somerville & Ross’s Experiences of an Irish RM. Also illustrated all 10 covers for Simon Raven’s novel sequence, ‘Alms of Oblivion’.

Work is first published in the Observer and Radio Times. First travel assignment to southern Spain to illustrate stories by Norman Lewis for The Sunday Times.

1984-89 As founder contributor to Blueprint magazine, produced reportage illustrations documenting international cities.

1985 Moved to 33 Gloucester Drive, Finsbury Park, London.

Exhibition held at the Illustrators’ Gallery, Association of Illustrators, Colville Place, London.

Illustrated Dylan Thomas’s The Outing. Published his first work in the Daily Telegraph and Esquire, whose ‘Smart Money’ section featured his work over two years. Produced the first full-colour cover for The Spectator.

Designed poster for ‘The London Explorer’ for London Transport.

1986 Illustrated Tim Heald’s The Character of Cricket.

1987 Married Julia, a fellow graduate from the RCA. Produced first series of 22 illustrations for ‘Village London’ for The Observer. Produced the first full-colour illustration to appear in the Daily Telegraph.

1988 Illustrated Graham Rose’s The Romantic Garden and Peter Terson’s The Offcuts Voyage.

Work is first published in Punch. Produced second series of 18 illustrations for ‘Village London’ for The Observer.

1989 Moved to the Old Rectory, Tilney All Saints, Kings Lynn, Norfolk.

First exhibition of his work held at Chris Beetles Gallery.

First commissioned to design stamps for Royal Mail,

12 | CHRONOLOGY OF LIFE AND WORK

including designs to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the first Lord Mayor of London.

Illustrated Andrew Gurr’s Rebuilding Shakespeare’s Globe and Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.

1989-96 Through The Folio Society, illustrated numerous works by P G Wodehouse: Leave it to Psmith (1989), and 11 of the Jeeves and Wooster novels, including Thank You, Jeeves (1996).

1990 Illustrated Hugh de Selincourt’s The Cricket Match.

1991 Birth of daughter, Harriet.

1992 Published his first work in Vanity Fair. Illustrated H E Bates’ The Darling Buds of May, Tim Heald’s Honourable Estates and Favourite Songs of Denmark.

1993 Became Honorary Member of the Society of Architect Artists Second exhibition of his work held at Chris Beetles Gallery.

Exhibition at the Scandinavian Contemporary Art Gallery, Copenhagen.

Illustrated Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows and Faith Stewart-Gordon’s The Russian Tea Room.

1994 Birth of son, Jack.

Illustrated John Mortimer’s Rumpole.

1995 Illustrated Louise Nicholson’s Look Out London! Produced book jacket illustrations for all current and back issues of novels by David Lodge, for Penguin USA, and for all the ‘Miss Silver Mysteries’ by Patricia Wentworth, for Harper USA. 1996 Moved to Wilmington, East Sussex.

1998 Illustrated Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men on the Bummel.

1999 Illustrated Jeanne Willis’s Tinkerbill.

2001 Major retrospective of his work held at Chris Beetles Gallery. Exhibition at the Molesworth Gallery, Dublin.

2003 Illustrated Tim Heald’s The Best After Dinner Stories for The Folio Society, and Lois Lowry’s The Giver.

2004 Completed a mural for the Eleanor Davies Colley Lecture Theatre at the Royal College of Surgeons.

Produced historical images for the ‘Drama & Debate’ exhibition at Hampton Court Palace.

Illustrated The Folio Society’s six-volume collection of P G Wodehouse, ‘Best of Blandings’, and Wilma Horsbrugh’s The Train to Glasgow.

2005 Designed and painted the sets for the 50th anniversary production of Julian Slade’s musical, Salad Days.

2006 Commissioned by The Folio Society to illustrate a 50th anniversary edition of Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals. These drawings were then exhibited at Chris Beetles Gallery and the Durrell Wildlife Foundation in Jersey.

2007 Completed a set of 15 large watercolours for the St Charles Hospital, Ladbroke Grove, London.

2009 Illustrated Stanley Trachtenberg’s children’s book The Elevator Man, and Ned Halley’s comic wine stories, Absolute Corkers.

2009-11 Visiting Lecturer at West Dean College, West Sussex.

Commissioned to produce the first of more than 40 covers for the magazine, International Living.

2011 Returned to London, moving into a house in Highgate.

Produced 15 fashion illustrations for the Savile Row tailors, Anderson & Sheppard.

Illustrated Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners.

2012 Illustrated Jason Kersten’s Did I Mention the Free Wine and Paul E Richardson’s Running is Flying.

1:1 Britain: London

14 | 1:1 BRITAIN: LONDON

1:1 Britain: London

Paul Cox is a Londoner. Not only was he born in London, but he has also lived for long periods both north and south of the Thames, and has experienced the city in many different ways. While studying Illustration at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, he was set the task of portraying any aspects of London that he wanted, and so took to the streets, taking long walks and drawing people and buildings. This set him in good stead for many and varied subsequent projects, from an astonishing aerial view of the Royal Albert Hall for Radio Times [02 ] to a celebratory panorama of the Lord Mayor’s Show for a set of stamps for Royal Mail [09 ].

‘I have always loved London. I mean I think it’s in my blood, and I recognise belatedly, perhaps, that it was somewhere I shouldn’t have left, but I’m glad I had because I appreciate it more … The London element is a holdfast for me, whether I am away from it or here.’ (Paul Cox)

01 MICHELIN BUILDING ‘BROMPTON CROSS’ Signed, inscribed with title and dated 1990 Inscribed with title and dated 1990 on reverse Watercolour with pen ink and bodycolour 23 1⁄2 x 29 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Vogue, 1990, an article on London, by Sally Brampton

02 ON WITH THE PROMS: THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL Signed and dated ’86 Inscribed ‘Cover for Radio Times – “Proms” issue published with an illustration of 4 British Symphony Orchestras – in feature’ and dated 1986 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 24 1⁄4 x 19 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Radio Times, 12-18 July 1986, front cover Exhibited: ‘Artists of Radio Times’, September 2002, no 70

03 AN EVENING AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM Signed and dated ’87 Inscribed ‘Brochure advertising evenings at the Natural History Museum’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 5 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Brochure to advertise evenings at the Natural History Museum, 1987

1:1 BRITAIN: LONDON | 15

04 ADMIRALTY ARCH Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed with title on reverse Pen and ink 21 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄2 inches

06 LE GAVROCHE Signed and inscribed with title Date stamped ‘1 Mar 1995’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 16 3⁄4 x 21 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Sunday Express Magazine, April 1995, one of a series of interviews with personalities in their favourite restaurants, by Andrew Duncan

05 PICCADILLY CIRCUS Signed Inscribed ‘Cover for ES Magazine (Evening Standard)’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 25 x 20 inches Illustrated: Evening Standard, ES Magazine, 1996, front cover

16 | 1:1 BRITAIN: LONDON

07 DUKE OF YORK STEPS Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed with title on reverse Pen and ink 20 x 14 1⁄2 inches

08 SKATING AT SOMERSET HOUSE Signed and dated 2007 Pen ink and watercolour 30 x 22 inches

09 LORD MAYOR’S SHOW Signed and dated 1989 Inscribed ‘Preliminary sketch for 500th Anniversary Lord Mayor Show for 3 of 5 stamps – Royal Mail – published 1989’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 13 1⁄2 x 28 1⁄2 inches Preliminary design for the three central stamps, a set of five to commemorate the 800th Anniversary of the Lord Mayor of London, Royal Mail, 17 October 1989

1:1 BRITAIN: LONDON | 17

10 PEARLY KING AND QUEEN AT A HARVEST FESTIVAL Signed and dated 1992 Inscribed ‘Pearly Harvest Festival – In Britain mag’ and date stamped ‘20 Jul 1992’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 11 1⁄2 x 12 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: In Britain magazine, 1992

11 AT THE EXHIBITION Signed Inscribed ‘Exhibitions’ below mount Inscribed ‘Londinium Mag – Feature Headers – Art & Travel’ and date stamped ‘18 Oct 2000’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 4 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Londinium Magazine, 2000

12 A VICTORIAN SUMMER Signed, inscribed ‘Morris, Burne Jones, Kipling, Graham Bell, Sickert, Ruskin, Nightingale, Millais, Langtree, Carroll, Victoria, Lord Leighton, Gladstone, Grace, Wilde, Tennyson, Esther & J W Waterhouse’ and dated ’09 Inscribed ‘Published – Royal Academy Magazine J W Waterhouse exhibiting “The Lady of Shalott” RA in 1888 – Private View to include all Society types and Royalty – all neighbouring pictures exhibited at the time and their position in the gallery not referenced’ and dated ‘June ‘09’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 20 1⁄2 x 33 inches Illustrated: Royal Academy Magazine, Summer 2009

18 | 1:1 BRITAIN: LONDON

14 LONDON PROPERTY BOOM Signed and dated ’97 Inscribed ‘Wall St Journal Property Boom’ and dated ‘Aug 97’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 10 1⁄2 x 12 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Wall Street Journal, 1997

15 LONDON Signed and dated ’89 Date stamped ‘8 Nov 1989’ on reverse Pen and ink 21 1⁄2 x 16 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: Regardie’s Magazine, 1989, ‘Letter from London’

13 BUS STOP Signed and dated ’89 Pen ink and watercolour 12 1⁄2 x 3 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: London Transport brochure, 1989

16 PERSUADING AGENTS Signed and dated 1999 Date stamped ‘29 Jun 1999’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Daily Telegraph, July 1999

1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE | 19

1:2 Britain: Life and Landscape

20 | 1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE

1:2 Britain: Life and Landscape

From early childhood, Paul Cox gained experiences of Britain beyond London. He frequently went to his family’s cottage on the Isle of Wight and often stayed at Furlongs on the Sussex Downs, the retreat of the artist, Peggy Angus. Then, at the age of eight, he was sent away to boarding schools, first to Port Regis in Dorset and then to Stanbridge Earls in Hampshire. At the latter, he learned much from his art teacher, the accomplished watercolourist, Ray Evans, and engaged with his natural surroundings. Once established as an artist, he lived for periods in Norfolk and then Sussex, in a house once owned by the Edwardian rural painter, Harold Swanwick. These places greatly informed what may be considered his characteristic vision of Britain – prosperous and peaceful – as is well represented here. However, his range is broader and earthier than it first seems, and his favourite British subject outside London is probably the Scottish city of Glasgow [32 ].

17 LE MANOIR AUX QUATRE SAISONS Signed, inscribed with title and dated ’89 Inscribed ‘Sunday Express Magazine – series of restaurants featured for interview’ and dated 1989 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 19 1⁄2 x 23 inches Illustrated: Sunday Express Magazine, 1989, one of a series of interviews with personalities in their favourite restaurants, by Andrew Duncan

18 MAJOR MORE-MOLYNEUX, LOSELEY Signed Inscribed ‘Loseley Manor House “Honourable Estates”‘ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 17 x 23 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Tim Heald, Honourable Estates, London: Pavilion Books, 1992, pages 30-31

1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE | 21

19 LORD MONTAGU – BEAULIEU Signed and dated 1992 Pen ink and watercolour 16 3⁄4 x 25 inches Illustrated: Tim Heald, Honourable Estates, London: Pavilion Books, 1992, pages 46-47

20 BRYMPTON D’EVERCY Signed Inscribed with title below mount Pen ink and watercolour 15 3⁄4 x 22 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: Tim Heald, Honourable Estates, London: Pavilion Books, 1992, pages 150-151

21 SANDRINGHAM HOUSE Signed and dated 1992 Inscribed with title below mount Pen ink and watercolour 17 x 23 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: Tim Heald, Honourable Estates, London: Pavilion Books, 1992, pages 110-111

22 | 1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE

22 CHATSWORTH Signed and dated 1992 Inscribed ‘“Honourable Estates” – Chatsworth cover & inside spread’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄4 x 23 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Tim Heald, Honourable Estates, London: Pavilion Books, 1992, pages 158-159

23 THE NINTH DUKE AND DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE TAKE TEA WITH THEIR FAMILY AT CHATSWORTH Signed and dated 2012 Pen ink and watercolour, 15 1⁄2 x 22 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: Tufts Magazine [the alumni magazine of Tufts College], 2012

1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE | 23

24 FINISHING LINE, ASCOT Signed and dated 1990 Date stamped ‘9 Nov 1990’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 15 x 17 1⁄2 inches Drawn for but not illustrated in Sports Illustrated Magazine, 1990

26 GOODWOOD RACES Signed and dated ’92 Watercolour with pen and ink 17 x 24 inches Illustrated: Tim Heald, Honourable Estates, London: Pavilion Books, 1992, pages 22-23

25 LADY JAMES CALLED UP TO THE NURSERY, ‘NANNY, I NEED A CHILD TO GO TO CHURCH WITH’ Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘West Dean staircase – Edward James’ mother’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 17 1⁄4 x 12 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: Tufts Magazine [the alumni magazine of Tufts College], 2012

24 | 1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE

27 GOODWOOD RACES Signed and dated ’07 Pen ink, watercolour and bodycolour 19 1⁄2 x 27 inches 28 GOODWOOD FESTIVAL OF SPEED Signed and dated 2000 Date stamped ‘2 Jul 2000’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 x 16 inches

29 COWES SAILING (opposite top) Signed and dated ’07 Inscribed with title and dated 2007 on reverse Watercolour with pen ink and bodycolour 16 x 22 1⁄4 inches 30 SIRIUS, BEMBRIDGE (opposite bottom) Signed and dated ’07 Inscribed with title and dated 2007 on reverse Watercolour with pen ink and bodycolour 15 1⁄4 x 22 1⁄4 inches

1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE | 25

26 | 1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE

31 HENLEY REGATTA Signed and dated 2008 Inscribed with title on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 4 1⁄4 x 13 1⁄4 inches

32 THE BARRAS Signed and dated 1991 Inscribed with title and dated 3/11/91 below mount Date stamped ‘11 Nov 1991’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 1⁄4 x 29 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: Hugh Cochrane, Impressions of Glasgow, Glasgow: Britoil, 1991 (2nd edition), supplementary illustration

33 LOCH NESS MONSTER Signed and dated ’92 Date stamped ‘12 Nov 1992’ and ‘18 Nov 1992’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 6 x 16 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: In Britain magazine, 1992

1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE | 27

34 THE GREAT OUTDOORS Signed and dated ’98 Inscribed ‘Camping Feature – Guardian newspaper’ and dated 1998 on original support Date stamped ‘17 Sep 1998’ on reverse Pen and ink 11 1⁄2 x 14 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: Guardian, September 1998

35 RAILWAY DRIVER Signed and dated ’93 Inscribed ‘“In Britain Magazine” Railway Driver’, dated 1993 and date stamped ‘14 Jan 1993’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 7 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: In Britain magazine, 1993

36 PLANS FOR THE GARDEN Signed and dated ’01 Inscribed ‘Telegraph Gardening’ and date stamped ‘27 Mar 2001’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄2 x 17 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Daily Telegraph, April 2001

28 | 1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE

38 MUSIC IN THE GARDEN Signed Inscribed ‘Beginning Vignette’ below mount Date stamped ‘28 Feb 2003’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 6 1⁄4 x 4 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: Gardens Illustrated, 2003

37 A COLOURFUL BALLOON RIDE Signed and dated ’01 Inscribed ‘Telegraph Magazine – Alternative Summer Events’, dated 5/6/2001 and date stamped ‘5 Jun 2001’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 15 x 11 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Daily Telegraph Magazine, June 2001

39 SCHOOL DINNER Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed with title and ‘Country Life magazine’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 11 3⁄4 x 28 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Country Life, 2012

1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE | 29

40 100 DAYS OF BRITISH SUMMER I Signed and dated 2012 Pen ink and watercolour 19 1⁄2 x 29 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Country Life, 2012, ‘100 Days of British Summer’

41 100 DAYS OF BRITISH SUMMER II Signed and dated 2012 Pen ink and watercolour 20 x 29 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Country Life, 2012, ‘100 Days of British Summer’

30 | 1:2 BRITAIN: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE

42 100 DAYS OF BRITISH SUMMER III Signed and dated 2012 Pen ink and watercolour 20 x 29 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Country Life, 2012, ‘100 Days of British Summer’

43 100 DAYS OF BRITISH SUMMER IV Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 20 x 29 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Country Life, 2012, ‘100 Days of British Summer’

1:3 BRITAIN: LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS | 31

1:3 Britain: Literary Illustrations

32 | 1:3 BRITAIN: LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS

1:3 Britain: Literary Illustrations

Throughout his career, Paul Cox has paralleled topographical drawing with literary illustration, and the two genres have informed each other. His responses to particular texts are invariably imbued with a strong spirit of place, which is often achieved through imaginative re-creation. This can be clearly seen in images inspired by Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, which bring to life the Thames Valley of the late Victorian period [49 & 52]. This skill made Paul an ideal illustrator of Rebuilding Shakespeare’s Globe by the literary scholar, Andrew Gurr. Paul peoples the (then projected) reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe and its sister theatre with audiences of Elizabethans – as if rebuilding would revive an entire age and culture [45 & 46].

44 THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR Signed and dated ’96 Inscribed ‘Poster & Catalogue Programe Cover for “The Merry Wives of Windsor”’, dated 1996 and date stamped ‘25 Nov 1996’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 33 x 22 inches Illustrated: RSC Autumn Season poster and programme cover, 1996

1:3 BRITAIN: LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS | 33

45-46 are both illustrated in Andrew Gurr, Rebuilding Shakespeare’s Globe, New York: Routledge (A Theatre Arts Book), 1989 45 DRAMATIC MOMENT Signed Inscribed ‘Inigo Jones Theatre – published in “Rebuilding The Globe”’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 x 27 1⁄2 inches

46 WATCHING FROM THE GALLERY Signed Inscribed ‘Gallery Globe Theatre (from The Globe)’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 3⁄4 x 28 inches

34 | 1:3 BRITAIN: LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS

47 RUSH HOUR AT THE LOCK Signed Pen and ink 13 1⁄2 x 9 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Peter Terson, The Offcuts Voyage, Oxford University Press, 1988

48 THE LARKINS’ ICE CREAMS Signed Inscribed ‘Larkins in Van – “Darling Buds of May” Reader’s Digest’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 5 x 6 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: H E Bates, The Darling Buds of May, London: Reader’s Digest Association, 1992

49 THE ORDER OF THE PROCESSION WAS AS FOLLOWS Signed and dated 89 Inscribed with title below mount Pen ink and watercolour 18 x 24 inches Illustrated: Jerome K Jerome, Three Men in a Boat, London: Pavilion Books, 1989, page 126

1:3 BRITAIN: LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS | 35

50 THE CORKSCREW Signed and dated 2002 Inscribed ‘Sarah Caudwell vignette for the back of covers – Constable & Robinson’ and dated 17/1/2002 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 6 1⁄2 x 11 3⁄4 inches Illustrated on the back cover of all four of Sarah Caudwell’s legal mysteries published by Constable & Robinson, circa 2002 51 A BOOK AT BEDTIME – LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER Signed and inscribed with title Inscribed ‘Radio Times – 1st serialisation of Lady Chatterley for Book at Bedtime!’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 20 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Radio Times, 1990

52 THREE MEN IN A BOAT, EVENING BY MARLOW BRIDGE Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2009 Pen ink and watercolour 16 x 23 1⁄2 inches Design for Pizza Express, Marlow, 2009

36 | 1:3 BRITAIN: LITERARY ILLUSTRATIONS

53 ROSIE Signed and dated ’04 Inscribed ‘Rosie’ below mount Pen and ink 16 x 23 inches Illustrated: Daily Express, 2004, ‘Rosie’ by Alan Titchmarsh

55 AND SO DID THE DRIVER, MR MACIVER, WHO DROVE THE TRAIN TO GLASGOW Date stamped ‘2 Jul 2003’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 12 x 23 inches Illustrated: Wilma Horsbrugh, The Train to Glasgow, New York: Clarion Books, 2004, [unpaginated]

54 ‘I’VE BEEN BADLY STUNG IN THE EAR

BY SOME INSECT’ Signed and dated 2005 Inscribed with title and publication details below mount Date stamped ‘18 May 2005’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 13 1⁄4 x 10 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: David Hughes (ed), The Folio Book of Comic Short Stories, London: The Folio Society, 2005, facing page 167, ‘The Bishop’s Handkerchief’ by Richmal Crompton

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 37

1:4 Britain: Illustrations to P G Wodehouse

38 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

1:4 Britain: Illustrations to P G Wodehouse

Of the 25 books that Paul Cox has illustrated for The Folio Society, 19 have been for texts by the classic English humourist, P G Wodehouse, so that a strong association has developed between illustrator and author. Paul has been keen to support rather than supplant the inimitable words of Wodehouse, and his method of making quick pencil responses as he reads has helped to carry an appropriate sense of spontaneity and ease into the finished illustrations. In working on such ambitious series of novels as ‘Jeeves & Wooster’ and ‘Blandings’, he also has the complicated task of checking for continuity, so ensuring that the characters and settings are consistent in appearance.

‘What an illustrator does is sense a comic wave occurring during the author’s text.The illustrator then floats with the emphasis and crescendo, the drawing has to work with, and accentuate the anticipation of, the comic moment and not spoil its effect.’

(Paul Cox)

56 CONDITIONS BEING AS THEY WERE AT BRINKLEY COURT … I HADN’T EXPECTED THE EVENING MEAL TO BE PARTICULARLY EFFERVESCENT Signed and dated 1996 Inscribed ‘I hadn’t expected the evening meal to be particularly effervescent’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 1⁄2 x 21 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: P G Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, London: The Folio Society, 1996, pages 80-81

Right Ho, Jeeves 1996

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 39

The Mating Season 1996 57-58 are both illustrated in P G Wodehouse, The Mating Season, London: The Folio Society, 1996

57 ‘OH, HALLO,’ I SAID, TRYING TO BE DEBONAIR BUT MISSING BY A MILE. ‘SQUIRTING THE ROSE TREES?’ Signed and dated 1996 Inscribed ‘Squirting the rose trees?’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 3⁄4 x 10 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 94

58 GUSSIE CAME BOUNDING UP WITH A LOOK OF REVERENT ADORATION ON HIS FACE AND A STEAMING CAN IN HIS HANDS Signed and dated 1996 Inscribed ‘Ah, here’s Gussie’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 1⁄2 x 10 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 98

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 1996 59-60 are both illustrated in P G Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, London: The Folio Society, 2000 59 I DIDN’T LIKE THE LOOK OF THE OLD BLISTER AT ALL. HIS MANNER WAS AUSTERE, AND AS THE TALE PROCEEDED HIS FACE, SUCH AS IT WAS, GREW HARD AND DARK WITH MENACE Signed and dated 2000 Inscribed ‘A good long stretch’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 8 1⁄2 x 10 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 61

60 I FOUND HIM, RICHLY APPARELLED AND WEARING THE BOWLER HAT, AT THE WHEEL OF THE CAR, ON THE POINT OF PUTTING FOOT TO SELF-STARTER Signed and dated 2000 Inscribed ‘Are you throwing?’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 8 1⁄2 x 9 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 172

40 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

Much Obliged Jeeves 2000 61-63 are all illustrated in P G Wodehouse, Much Obliged, Jeeves, London: The Folio Society, 2000

61 I STEPPED TO THE TELEPHONE, WELL PLEASED Signed and dated 2000 Inscribed ‘Music to my ears’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink, 8 x 6 inches Illustrated: page 17

62 JEEVES WAS IN A DECKCHAIR OUTSIDE THE BACK DOOR, READING SPINOZA WITH THE CAT AUGUSTUS ON HIS LAP Signed and dated 2000 Inscribed ‘Ginger has got to lose his election!’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink, 13 x 10 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 157

63 JEEVES WAS AT MY SIDE, BUT WHEREAS I HAD SELECTED NUMBER ONE AS MY OBJECTIVE, HIS INTENTION WAS TO PUSH ON TO NUMBER TWO Signed Inscribed ‘I had selected number one as my objective’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink, 15 1⁄2 x 20 inches Illustrated: pages 80-81

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 41

Summer Lightning 2004

64-69 are all illustrated in P G Wodehouse, Summer Lightning, London: The Folio Society, 2004

64 SUMMER LIGHTNING Signed and dated 2003 Inscribed with title below mount Date stamped ‘10 Dec 2003’ on reverse

Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄2 x 23 inches Illustrated: cover

65 BLANDINGS CASTLE, SHROPSHIRE Signed Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 17 1⁄2 x 22 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: P G Wodehouse, Summer Lightning, London: The Folio Society, 2004, endpapers; P G Wodehouse, Heavy Weather, London: The Folio Society, 2004, endpapers;

P G Wodehouse, Service with a Smile, London: The Folio Society, 2004, endpapers; P G Wodehouse, Pigs have Wings, London: The Folio Society, 2004, endpapers; P G Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, London: The Folio Society, 2004, endpapers; P G Wodehouse, Full Moon, London: The Folio Society, 2004, endpapers

42 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

66 THE WRITER’S IMAGINATION Signed Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 7 1⁄2 x 6 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: preface

67 TROUBLE BREWING AT BLANDINGS Signed Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 1⁄2 x 10 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: frontispiece

68 THE BUTLER WAS STANDING MOUNTAINOUSLY BESIDE THE TEA TABLE, STARING IN A SORT OF TRANCE AT A PLATEFUL OF ANCHOVY SANDWICHES Signed Inscribed ‘The theft of their employer’s pigs’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink, 15 1⁄4 x 10 inches Illustrated: page 142

69 SIMULTANEOUSLY, A SMALL BUT NOTEWORTHY PROCESSION FILED OUT OF THE HOUSE AND MADE ITS WAY ACROSS THE SUNBATHED LAWN TO WHERE THE BIG CEDAR CAST A GRATEFUL SHADE Signed Inscribed ‘Small but Noteworthy Procession’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink, 14 1⁄2 x 21 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: pages 24-25

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 43

Pigs have Wings 2004 70-75 are all illustrated in P G Wodehouse, Pigs have Wings, London: The Folio Society, 2004

71 PIGS HAVE WINGS Signed Inscribed with title below mount Date stamped ‘10 Dec 2003’ Pen ink and watercolour, 16 1⁄2 x 23 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: cover

70 ‘THE AFTERNOON POST, M’LORD,’ HE ANNOUNCED Signed Inscribed ‘The afternoon post M’Lord’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 12 1⁄4 x 10 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 8

44 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

72 AND YOU SEEM TO BE FORGETTING THAT WE’RE BOTH ENGAGED TO SOMEBODY ELSE Signed Pen and ink 15 1⁄4 x 10 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 71

73 AND AS HE DID SO, HE SUDDENLY STIFFENED, BLINKED, GASPED, DROPPED HIS CIGAR AND STOOD STARING Signed Inscribed ‘“What?” he stammered. “What what what?”’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 1⁄2 x 10 inches Illustrated: page 129

74 AND GALLY DROVE UP. HE WAS ACCOMPANIED

BY A LARGE PIG Signed Inscribed with title and publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 x 20 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: pages 198-199

75 HE OPENED THE DOOR Signed Inscribed with title and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 1⁄2 x 11 inches Illustrated: page 179

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 45

76 UNCLE FRED IN THE SPRINGTIME Signed Inscribed with title below mount Date stamped ‘10 Dec 2003’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄2 x 23 inches Illustrated: cover

Uncle Fred in the Springtime 2004 76-80 are all illustrated in P G Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, London: The Folio Society, 2004

77 THE AFTERGLOW OF THE SUNSET LIT UP HIS FACE, AND IT WAS AT THIS POINT THAT LORD ICKENHAM STRUCK THE JARRING NOTE

Signed Inscribed ‘It was at this point that Lord Ickenham struck a jarring note’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 1⁄2 x 10 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 93

78 THE EMPRESS OF BLANDINGS WAS A PIG WHO TOOK THINGS AS THEY CAME Signed Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 x 10 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: frontispiece

46 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

79 HE MOVED FORWARD WITH ELASTIC STEP AND FOLDED THE GIRL IN A WARM EMBRACE Signed Inscribed with title and publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 x 20 inches Illustrated: pages 84-85

80 ‘I WILL SHOW YOU HOW BILLIARDS SHOULD BE PLAYED. WATCH THIS SHOT’ Signed Inscribed ‘Rupert Baxter was there, staring at him through his spectacles’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 13 x 11 inches Illustrated: page 117

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 47

The Inimitable Jeeves 2010

81-87 are all illustrated in P G Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves, London: The Folio Society, 2010

82 I WENT STRAIGHT BACK TO MY ROOM, DUG OUT THE CUMMERBUND, AND DRAPED IT ROUND THE OLD TUM. I TURNED ROUND AND JEEVES SHIED LIKE A STARTLED MUSTANG Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 6 1⁄2 x 7 inches Illustrated: page 29

81 JUST THEN THE WAITRESS ARRIVED. RATHER A PRETTY GIRL Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 13 1⁄4 x 10 inches Illustrated: page 8 83 SITTING ON THE STONEWORK, FISHING, WAS A SPECIES OF KID WHOM I TOOK TO BE OSWALD THE PLAGUE-SPOT Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 13 3⁄4 x 9 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 51

84 I HAD FALLEN INTO A MEDITATION, WHEN SUDDENLY THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY THING TOOK PLACE. MY HAT WAS SNATCHED ABRUPTLY FROM MY HEAD! Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed ‘Sir Roderick comes to lunch’ and with publication details below mount Pen and ink 3 1⁄2 x 7 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 67

48 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

85 YOUNG BINGO WAS CERTAINLY TEARING OFF SOME RIPE STUFF Signed Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 x 19 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: pages 120-121

86 THE NEXT MINUTE HE WAS SHOVING HIS WAY BACK THROUGH THE CROWD, WITH BINGO IN HIS RIGHT HAND AND COMRADE BUTT IN HIS LEFT Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 9 1⁄2 x 9 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 123

87 HE WAS JUST RAISING HIS FINGERS LIMPLY TO HIS CAP WHEN HE SUDDENLY SAW THAT THE GIRL WASN’T ALONE Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 7 1⁄4 x 9 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 171

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 49

89 SELF AT THE OARS AND JEEVES HANDLING THE TILLER-ROPES Signed Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 13 1⁄2 x 19 inches Illustrated: pages 20-21

88 ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TO GO TO THE NEAREST BOOKSELLER Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 10 3⁄4 x 8 inches Illustrated: page 5, preface

Very Good, Jeeves 2010 88-99 are all illustrated in P G Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves, London: The Folio Society, 2010

90 EVERY YOUNG MAN STARTING LIFE OUGHT TO KNOW HOW TO COPE WITH AN ANGRY SWAN, SO I WILL BRIEFLY RELATE THE PROPER PROCEDURE Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 1⁄2 x 10 inches Illustrated: page 28

91 I WAS JUST WONDERING IF I WOULD EVER GET TO SLEEP AGAIN IN THIS WORLD WHEN A VOICE AT MY ELBOW SAID ‘GOOD MORNING, SIR,’ AND I SAT UP WITH A JERK Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 x 10 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 71

50 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

92 PRESENTLY THE DOOR OF THE SUITE OPENED AND BOBBIE APPEARED, AND SUDDENLY, AS I APPROACHED, OUT SHOT MCINTOSH, SNIFFING PASSIONATELY Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 13 x 9 inches Illustrated: page 113

93 I HAD JUST WORKED MYSELF UP INTO RATHER AN IMPRESSIVE STATE OF MORAL INDIGNATION, AND WAS PREPARING TO GO EVEN FURTHER, WHEN A SUDDEN BRIGHT LIGHT SHONE UPON ME FROM BELOW AND A VOICE SPOKE Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink, 14 1⁄2 x 9 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 158

94 SHE GOT OUT AND BEGAN PEERING INTO THE THING’S VITALS Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 13 1⁄2 x 10 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 211

95 JEEVES AND THE OLD SCHOOL CHUM Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with title and publication details below mount Pen and ink 3 3⁄4 x 6 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 193

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 51

96 THE ORDEAL OF YOUNG TUPPY Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with title and publication details below mount Pen and ink 4 1⁄4 x 7 inches Illustrated: page 244

97 SUDDENLY THERE APPEARED AHEAD OF US A SEA OF DOGS AND IN THE MIDDLE OF IT YOUNG TUPPY FRISKING ROUND ONE OF THOSE LARGISH, CORN-FED GIRLS Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 x 10 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 251

98 I WAS SHOCKED TO OBSERVE THAT PRACTICALLY EVERY SECOND MALE MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH’S BIG BROTHER Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink with bodycolour 11 x 9 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 257

99 BY THE TIME HE HAD COME TO THE SURFACE, A SORT OF MOB-WARFARE WAS GOING ON AT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FIELD Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink with bodycolour 12 x 10 inches Illustrated: page 261

52 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

100 JEEVES WAS SITTING AT A TABLE ON THE EDGE OF THE DANCING-FLOOR, DOING HIMSELF REMARKABLY WELL WITH A FAT CIGAR. HIS FACE WORE AN EXPRESSION OF AUSTERE BENEVOLENCE, AND HE WAS MAKING NOTES IN A SMALL BOOK Signed and dated ’10 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 15 x 18 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: pages 98-99

Carry On, Jeeves 2010

100-107 are all illustrated in P G Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves, London: The Folio Society, 2010

101 POOR OLD BIFFY LEAPED THREE FEET IN THE AIR AND SMASHED A SMALL TABLE Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 10 3⁄4 x 8 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 131

102 THE MAN BEHIND THE COUNTER, AS KINDLY A BLOKE AS I EVER WISH TO MEET, SEEMED TO GUESS OUR REQUIREMENTS THE MOMENT WE HOVE IN VIEW Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 1⁄4 x 9 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 140

1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE | 53

103 THE BEAK GAVE A COLDISH NOD IN MY DIRECTION, AS MUCH AS TO SAY THAT THEY MIGHT NOW STRIKE THE FETTERS FROM MY WRISTS Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 11 1⁄4 x 9 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 149

104 AT THIS MOMENT A CAT STROLLED OUT FROM UNDER THE SOFA AND MADE FOR ME WITH ITS TAIL UP Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details on reverse Pen and ink with bodycolour 12 3⁄4 x 10 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: page 158

105 AND, BY JOVE, SHE HELD UP IN FRONT OF THE KID’S BULGING EYES A CHUNK OF TOFFEE ABOUT THE SIZE OF THE ALBERT MEMORIAL! Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 14 1⁄2 x 9 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 192

106 AND THE NEXT MOMENT I WAS IN A LAUREL BUSH, FEELING LIKE THE CROSS WHICH MARKS THE SPOT WHERE THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 11 1⁄4 x 8 inches Illustrated: page 216

54 | 1:4 BRITAIN: ILLUSTRATIONS TO P G WODEHOUSE

107 SO I GATHERED UP THE KID AND MADE OFF WITH HIM Signed and dated 2010 Inscribed with publication details below mount Pen and ink 7 1⁄4 x 8 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: page 179

108 BLANDINGS Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘Workbook Promo – Blandings’ and dated 10/4/2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 23 1⁄4 x 16 1⁄4 inches

2:1 EUROPE: ROME | 55

2:1 Europe: Rome

56 | 2:1 EUROPE: ROME

2:1 Europe: Rome

Paul Cox made his first visit to Rome in 2011, specifically in preparation for the present exhibition. He was introduced to the city by Chris Beetles, and then left to make a series of drawings. As in other Italian cities, Paul was attracted to the way that contemporary life goes on among the ancient buildings and artifacts. However, Rome offered something new, in making him realise how positively he responded to the exuberance and embellishment of the Baroque style. So his eye and hand were ever active, in exploring the rotund and rolling forms, and capturing them in ink and watercolour. The resulting images present Rome as extraordinarily active, with pedestrians, cyclists and Vespa riders making the most of the theatrical settings.

‘I think Rome has taught me something about my own inclinations – architecturally – about wanting to go with this exuberance, and let it push me on a bit and ride it. I didn’t really understand that before, though I knew I liked those things.’

(Paul Cox)

109 PIAZZA DEL POPOLO Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 20 x 29 1⁄2 inches

2:1 EUROPE: ROME | 57

110 PIAZZA DI SPAGNA Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 29 1⁄2 inches

111 FONTANA DI TREVI Signed, inscribed ‘Trevi’ and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 21 x 28 1⁄2 inches

58 | 2:1 EUROPE: ROME

112 PIAZZA DI SANT’IGNAZIO Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 28 1⁄2 x 21 1⁄2 inches

114 VIA GIUSTINIANI Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 17 x 23 3⁄4 inches

113 PIAZZA DELLA MADDALENA Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 24 x 17 inches

2:1 EUROPE: ROME | 59

115 PIAZZA DELLA ROTONDA I Signed, inscribed with title and dated ’11 Pen ink and watercolour 15 x 23 1⁄2 inches

116 SANT’IVO FROM SANT’EUSTACHIO Signed, inscribed ‘Saint’Ivo and Saint’Eustachio’ and dated ’11 Pen ink and watercolour 27 x 18 3⁄4 inches

117 SANT’IVO ALLA SAPIENZA Signed, inscribed ‘Sant’Ivo’ and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 24 1⁄4 x 17 1⁄2 inches

118 PIAZZA DELLA ROTONDA II Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 21 x 29 1⁄2 inches

60 | 2:1 EUROPE: ROME

119 PIAZZA NAVONA Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 21 1⁄2 x 29 1⁄2 inches 120 PIAZZA DELLA MINERVA Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 21 x 16 1⁄2 inches

121 FONTANA DELLE TARTARUGHE Signed, inscribed with title and dated ’11 Pen ink and watercolour 17 x 23 inches

122 PORTICO DI OTTAVIA Signed, inscribed with title and dated ’11 Pen ink and watercolour 17 x 24 inches

2:1 EUROPE: ROME | 61

124 STATUES OF CASTOR AND POLLUX Signed, inscribed ‘Castor and Pollux’ and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 16 x 24 inches

123 SANTI LUCA E MARTINA FROM SAN GIUSEPPE DEI FALEGNAMI Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 24 x 16 1⁄2 inches

125 ARCH OF CONSTANTINE Signed and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 29 1⁄2 inches

126 FORO DI TRAIANO Signed, inscribed ‘Foro Triano’ and dated ’11 Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 29 inches

62 | 2:1 EUROPE: ROME

127 PONTE CESTIO Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄2 x 24 1⁄2 inches

128 PONTE ROTTO Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄4 x 24 inches

129 PIAZZA DEI CAVALIERI DI MALTA Signed, inscribed with title and dated ’11 Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄2 x 25 inches

130 SANTA MARIA IN TRASTEVERE Signed, inscribed with title and dated 2011 Pen ink and watercolour 21 x 29 inches

2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS | 63

2:2 Europe: Other Destinations

64 | 2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS

2:2 Europe: Other Destinations

Paul Cox has been visiting Europe since childhood, when he made the first of many inspiring trips to Uzès, in the South of France [139 & 141]. Since then, his European visits have been concentrated mainly in France, Italy and Spain, the last of which provided the setting for a significant early commission: stories by Norman Lewis that were published in The Sunday Times in 1984. However, other projects have led him to engage with a range of European countries, and in a variety of ways. So the Irish capital, Dublin, was one of several of the places he visited as a founding contributor to Blueprint magazine [131], while Copenhagen provided the backdrop for illustrations to Favourite Songs of Denmark [134].

More recently, he has provided images of such cities as Venice and Pamplona for the covers of International Living [144 & 147].

Ireland

131 MERRION SQUARE, DUBLIN Signed, inscribed ‘Merrion Square’ and dated 12/5/88 Inscribed ‘Blueprint magazine – Dublin feature’ and dated 1988 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 x 29 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Blueprint, 1988 Exhibited: ‘Paul Cox 2001’, Molesworth Gallery, Dublin, 2001

132 CORK – IRELAND SECRETS OF IRELAND’S SOUTH COAST Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘Cork – Ireland’ and ‘International Living cover’, and dated ‘Nov 2011’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: International Living, November 2011, front cover

2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS | 65

Switzerland 133 WORLD THEME PARK Signed and dated ’99 Inscribed ‘Swissair Gazette magazine – Theme Park feature’, dated 1999 and date stamped ‘1 Jun 1999’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 21 1⁄2 x 21 3⁄4 inches Drawn for Swissair Gazette, publicity brochure, June 1999

Denmark

134 COPENHAGEN Date stamped ‘8 Jul 1992’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 14 1⁄2 x 23 inches Illustrated: Favourite Songs of Denmark, Copenhagen: Wilhelm Hansen, 1992, ‘Katinka Katinka’

by Sigfried Pederson and Neils Clemmenson

66 | 2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS

France

135 PARIS GIVENCHY CHRISTMAS SCENE Signed and dated 1998 Inscribed ‘Givenchy Christmas scene’ and date stamped ‘14 Oct 1998’ and ‘2 Jul 2000’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 3⁄4 x 16 1⁄2 inches Drawn as an advertisement for Givenchy

137 THE CARLTON, CANNES Signed Pen ink and watercolour 30 x 22 inches

136 PRESSE KIOSK PARIS Signed and dated ’08 Watercolour with pen ink and bodycolour 23 1⁄4 x 17 inches

138 LE PIN Signed and inscribed with title Pen ink and watercolour 17 x 24 1⁄2 inches

2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS | 67

139 UZES Signed and inscribed with title Pen ink and watercolour 22 x 29 inches

140 CHATEAU DU PORT, MARSEILLAN Signed Inscribed with title and ‘Etang de Thau’ and dated 2005 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 19 x 28 3⁄4 inches

141 UZES MARKET Signed and inscribed with title and dated 2005 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 28 inches

68 | 2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS

Italy

142 THE PALIO, SIENA I Signed and dated 2000 Inscribed ‘Palio Sienna’ and’ For promotional piece for – American Showcase’, dated 2000 and date stamped ‘2 Jul 2000’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 23 x 17 1⁄4 inches

143 THE PALIO, SIENA II Signed and dated 2007 Pen ink and watercolour 30 x 22 inches

144 VENICE FIND YOUR NICHE IN AN OVERSEAS PARADISE Signed and dated 2012 Pen ink and watercolour 21 1⁄4 x 17 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: International Living, November 2012, front cover

2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS | 69

Malta 145 MALTA Signed and dated 2013 Inscribed with title and ‘International Living cover for August 13’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: International Living, August 2013, front cover

Spain 146 ZAFRA Signed, inscribed with title and dated ’08 inscribed with title and dated 2008 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 x 17 inches

147 PAMPLONA SPAIN’S SECRET NORTH: FIESTAS FOOD AND 13,000 VINEYARDS Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘Pamplona – cover for International Living’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 21 1⁄4 x 17 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: International Living, August 2012, front cover

70 | 2:2 EUROPE: OTHER DESTINATIONS

148 DEYA, MAJORCA Signed and dated 1991 Inscribed with title on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 23 1⁄4 x 29 1⁄2 inches

149 CALA DE DEYA – MAJORCA Signed, inscribed ‘Cala de Deya’ and dated 1991 Inscribed with title on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 17 1⁄2 x 25 inches

3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK | 71

3:1 America and Beyond: New York

72 | 3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK

3:1 America and Beyond: New York

After London, New York is Paul Cox’s favourite city. On his first adult visit, on assignment for Blueprint in 1986, the scale of the architecture excited him and the energy intoxicated.

And on each subsequent trip, the thrill has remained. Though he admits that the hectic nature of Manhattan life can make drawing difficult, he has sustained his appetite for working on the street in order to represent its buildings and people. Indeed, he loves the raw directness of the New Yorkers, who may shout at him when he is in their way, yet encourage him warmly soon after, and even offer him advice. Numerous commissions over the years, from American publishers and other companies, have helped him to become something of an honorary New Yorker, and he has made good friends with members of the city’s Society of Illustrators, among others.

150-154 are all illustrated in Blueprint 150 BROOKLYN BRIDGE Signed Inscribed with title and ‘Published Blueprint magazine’ on reverse Pen and ink 22 3⁄4 x 29 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: March 1986

151 WALL STREET Signed and dated ’86 Inscribed ‘Wall St – NY Blueprint’ and dated 1986 on reverse Pen and ink with watercolour 23 1⁄2 x 29 inches Illustrated: March 1986

3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK | 73

152 FIFTH AVENUE Signed Pen ink and watercolour 28 x 22 inches Illustrated: March 1986

154 GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL – NY Inscribed with title and ‘Blueprint magazine’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 23 x 29 inches Illustrated: March 1986

153 THE FLATIRON BUILDING Signed Pen ink and watercolour 27 x 23 inches Illustrated: March 1986

74 | 3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK

155 NEW YORK Signed and dated ’92 Pen ink and watercolour 24 1⁄2 x 18 1⁄2 inches Drawn for but not illustrated in The New Yorker, 1992, front cover 156 CHEQUERED CABS Signed and dated ’92 Date stamped ‘19 Sep 1992’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄2 x 12 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: New York Observer, 1992

157 RUSSIAN TEA ROOM Signed Date stamped ‘2 Jun 1992’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 1⁄2 x 15 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: Faith Stewart-Gordon, The Russian Tea Room: A Tasting, New York: Clarkson Potter, 1993

3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK | 75

158 CENTRAL PARK NEWS Signed and dated 2007 Pen ink and watercolour 30 x 22 inches

159 THE FLATIRON BUILDING Signed Inscribed ‘Flatiron – NY’ and dated 2005 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 23 x 16 inches

160 FLATIRON Signed and dated ’07 Watercolour with pen and ink 39 x 26 inches

76 | 3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK 161-166 are all illustrated in SRC [New York Law Firm], Annual Report, 2008 161 NEW YORK DELIVERY Signed and dated ’08 Inscribed ‘SRC Annual Report’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 29 1⁄2 x 22 1⁄2 inches

162 TIMES SQUARE Signed and dated ‘08 inscribed ‘SRC Annual Report’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 30 x 22 inches

163 NEW YORK REMOVALS Signed and dated ’08 Inscribed ‘SRC Annual Report’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 26 x 19 1⁄2 inches

3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK | 77

164 NEW YORK CONSTRUCTION SITE Signed and dated ‘08 Inscribed ‘SRC Annual Report’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 25 1⁄2 x 19 inches

165 WALL STREET Signed and dated ’08 Inscribed ‘SRC Annual Report’ on reverse Watercolour 26 x 19 1⁄2 inches

166 MIDTOWN Signed and dated ’08 Inscribed ‘SRC Annual Report’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 30 x 22 1⁄4 inches

78 | 3:1 AMERICA AND BEYOND: NEW YORK

167 NEW YORK LIFE Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘New York Promo piece – Publication Workbook’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 11 x 11 inches

168 CANAL ST ROOFS – LOOKING SOUTH Signed Inscribed with title on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 17 1⁄4 x 24 inches

3:2 America and Beyond: Town & Country and Vanity Fair

80 | 3:2 AMERICA AND BEYOND: TOWN & COUNTRY AND VANITY FAIR

3:2 America and Beyond: Town & Country and Vanity Fair

169 A WINTER SKI HOLIDAY Signed and dated ’94 Inscribed ‘Town & Country Skiing Feat’, dated ’94 and dated stamped ‘12 Oct 1994’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour, 15 3⁄4 x 13 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Town & Country, 1994

Among various American commissions, Paul Cox has contributed regularly to a range of magazines, including, most notably, Vanity Fair, and also Town & Country. Paul began to contribute to Vanity Fair in 1992, when Graydon Carter became its editor, having worked for him previously on Spy and the New York Observer. As suggested by the essay, ‘Performance Artist’, which Carter and his colleague, Cullen Murphy, have written especially for this catalogue, Paul has since become not only a fixture at Vanity Fair, but also an asset. Sometimes mistaken as an American illustrator, Paul’s art does much to sustain the special relationship between Britain and the United States.

170 COLOUR IN YOUR GARDEN Signed Pen ink and watercolour 12 1⁄2 x 9 3⁄4 inches Illustrated: Town & Country

171 RUBY RENTHAL ESCORTS HER HUSBAND, ELIAS, JUST RELEASED FROM A SEVEN-YEAR PRISON STINT, INTO THEIR NEW UPPER EAST SIDE MANSION Signed and dated 2009 Inscribed ‘New York High Society Funeral x 2 – Dominick Dunne Story’, dated 2009 and date stamped ‘28 Oct 2009’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 19 1⁄4 x 14 1⁄4 inches Illustrated: Vanity Fair, January 2010, ‘A Boldfaced Death’, an excerpt from Too Much Money by Dominick Dunne

172 THE GLAMOROUS FUNERAL OF SOCIETY HARCOURT EMPTIES OUT ONTO MADISON AVENUE Signed and dated 2009 Inscribed ‘Dominick Dunne Society Funeral.

Vanity Fair’, dated 2009 and date stamped ‘28 Oct 2009’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 x 24 inches Illustrated: Vanity Fair, January 2010, ‘A Boldfaced Death’, an excerpt from Too Much Money by Dominick Dunne

3:2 AMERICA AND BEYOND: TOWN & COUNTRY AND VANITY FAIR | 81

174 THE AUTHOR BOARDS THE GULFSTREAM V OF HIS CHARACTER ROBERT J ‘CORKY’ MCKORKLE Signed and dated 2009 Date stamped ‘3 Jul 2009’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 13 1⁄2 x 23 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Vanity Fair, September 2009, ‘The Rich Have Feelings, Too’ by Tom Wolfe

173 THE AUTHOR SUFFERS THE INDIGNITIES OF FLYING COACH Signed and dated 2009 Inscribed ‘Tom Wolfe – Flight Feature – Vanity Fair’ and date stamped ‘3 Jul 2009’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 16 1⁄2 x 12 inches Illustrated: Vanity Fair, September 2009, ‘The Rich Have Feelings, Too’ by Tom Wolfe

‘“You're a fabulous artist!” … even though my children insist that nobody says fabulous anymore.

Everybody says awesome. Either will do in this case, as long as it gets across my admiration of – and gratitude for – the illustrations you have done for two stories of mine in Vanity Fair; the first, about the private airplane people, “The Rich Have Feelings,Too”, and the one just published, about Miami Art Basel.

All too few artists today, in my opinion, have the Ronald Searlesque, Gillraydiant gift of rendering pictures of people, even crowds of them, in action in contemporary settings, on the streets, in the air, at the huge fairs and exhibitions that have such a showy role in the US just now.

With a tip of my biggest homburg (six-and-a-half-inch crown, three-and-a-half-inch curled brim with stout trim about the edge and a top cleft deep as a chasm)’ (Tom Wolfe, from a letter to Paul Cox)

82 | 3:2 AMERICA AND BEYOND: TOWN & COUNTRY AND VANITY FAIR

175 AFTER TWO SETS, BOND’S LUCK AGAINST GORNER BEGAN TO CHANGE Signed and dated 2008 Inscribed ‘“Devil May Care” James Bond for Vanity Fair’ and dated 2008 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 23 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: Vanity Fair, July 2008, ‘Advantage Mr Bond’, an excerpt from the James Bond novel, Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

176 WITH SCARLETT AT THE WHEEL, BOND HEADS FOR HIS MATCH WITH DR GORNER Signed and dated 2007 Inscribed ‘“Devil May Care” James Bond for Vanity Fair’ and date stamped ‘2 May 2007’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 17 x 25 inches Illustrated: Vanity Fair, July 2008, ‘Advantage Mr Bond’, an excerpt from the James Bond novel, Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks

3:3 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER AMERICAN COMMISSIONS | 83

3:3 America and Beyond: Other American Commissions

84 | 3:3 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER AMERICAN COMMISSIONS

3:3 America and Beyond: Other American Commissions As his agent is the New Yorker, Richard Solomon, Paul Cox has received many and varied American commissions, beyond those for conventional publications – and these are sampled here. For instance, he was asked to provide promotional images for the film that would become Muppet Treasure Island [177] and, about the same time, in the mid 1990s, devised a highly arresting composition to advertise a motor car [178]. A more recent group of vignettes and decorations demonstrate his fresh approach to illustrating a brochure for an estate agent [179-191]. He has also received commissions directly from Richard Solomon, as a way of promoting the agency and the artists that it represents. These have included a contribution to a game of visual consequences [193] and a response to the agency’s logo [197].

177 THE PIRATE CAPTAIN Signed Inscribed ‘Unpublished – Promotional piece for Illustration Annual’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 22 1⁄2 x 16 3⁄4 inches

Drawn as part of a commission by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which was working on a film of Treasure Island, circa 1996

178 OPTICAL ILLUSION Signed and dated ’96 Pen ink and watercolour 9 3⁄4 x 14 1⁄2 inches Drawn to advertise an American motor car

3:3 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER AMERICAN COMMISSIONS | 85

179-191 were all drawn for an advertising brochure for the Nantucket Estate Agent, Windwalker Real Estate, 2012

179 SAILING BOATS Signed and dated ’12 Inscribed ‘Vignette to Windwalker brochure’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 1 3⁄4 x 6 1⁄2 inches

180 OFF NANTUCKET Signed and dated ’12 Inscribed ‘Windwater Logo’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 5 3⁄4 x 3 1⁄2 inches

182 SHELLS AND FISHES Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 1 1⁄2 x 7 inches

181 WINDWALKER REAL ESTATES, NANTUCKET Signed and dated ’12 Inscribed ‘Nantucket. Windwalker Vignettes’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 5 3⁄4 x 4 1⁄2 inches

86 | 3:3 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER AMERICAN COMMISSIONS

183 BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 1 1⁄2 x 7 inches

184 WINDY WEATHER Signed and dated ’12 Inscribed ‘Nantucket – Windwalker Vignette’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 4 1⁄2 x 5 1⁄4 inches

186 NANTUCKET VINES Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 1 1⁄2 x 7 inches

185 A MODERN FAMILY HOME Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 4 3⁄4 x 4 3⁄4 inches

3:3 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER AMERICAN COMMISSIONS | 87

187 CHAIN AND ANCHOR Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 1 1⁄4 x 6 1⁄2 inches

189 HURRYING HOME WITH THE SHOPPING Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 5 1⁄4 x 4 1⁄4 inches

188 A FLORAL RIDE Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 5 x 5 inches

191 ROPES Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 1 1⁄4 x 6 1⁄2 inches

190 BEST BAKE SHOP IN TOWN Signed and dated ’12 Pen ink and watercolour 4 1⁄2 x 4 1⁄2 inches

88 | 3:3 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER AMERICAN COMMISSIONS

192 BAR DE LA FONTAINE Signed, inscribed with title and dated ’04 Inscribed ‘E + J Gallo Winery – sample image for ad – unpublished 2004’, and date stamped ‘30 Apr 2004’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 9 1⁄2 x 7 1⁄2 inches Design for E J Gallo Winery, 2004

193 THE FLOW Signed and dated ’12 Inscribed ‘Promo Piece – “The Flow” chair of drawing – linked with other artists in agency’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 10 1⁄2 x 10 1⁄4 inches One of a game of visual consequences, by various artists, drawn as a promotional image to appear on the website of Richard Solomon Artists Representative, 2012

3:3 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER DESTINATIONS | 89

3:4 America and Beyond: Other Destinations

90 | 3:4 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER DESTINATIONS

3:4 America and Beyond: Other Destinations

This catalogue seeks to demonstrate the breadth of Paul Cox’s achievement, and especially something of the geographical range of his imagery; for he is a significant topographical painter as well as an incisive and sensitive literary illustrator. He is often at his happiest sitting in a street or square, soaking up the atmosphere of a place and expressing its quintessence through his draughtsmanship. However, his covers for International Living show that he is so experienced as both artist and traveller that, even when working at one remove via reference material, he is able to convey much of the character of a place [198-204].

194-195 were both drawn for a magazine published for Minerva, a Cruise Vessel that is part of Swan Hellenic Discovery Cruising, 2012

194 DANCING BISHOP Signed and dated ’12 Inscribed ‘Minerva, Dancing Bishop, Cruise Magazine’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 8 x 6 1⁄4 inches

195 ON THE MINERVA Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘“Minerva” – Cruise Ship Feature – Cruise Magazine’ and dated 2012 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 24 x 17 inches

3:4 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER DESTINATIONS | 91

196 SAN XAVIER DEL BAC, ARIZONA Signed and dated ’07 Pen ink and watercolour 22 x 30 inches

197 GEMINI SAILING Signed and dated ’08 Inscribed ‘Gemini Richard Solomon promo pics’ and dated ’08 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 8 x 8 3⁄4 inches Drawn as a promotional image to appear on the website of Richard Solomon Artists Representative, 2008

92 | 3:4 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER DESTINATIONS 198-204 are all illustrated in International Living

198 EASY LIVING IN COSTA RICA’S CENTRAL VALLEY Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘Costa Rica’ and ‘International Living’, and dated ‘Sept 2012’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: September 2012, front cover

199 ESCAPE TO BELIZE FOR ADVENTURE AND FREEDOM Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘Belize, Pier on a Beach’ and ‘International Living cover’ and dated ‘December 2012’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 17 inches Illustrated: December 2012, front cover

200 COSTA RICA Signed and dated 2013 Inscribed with title and ‘Int Living’ and dated 1/5/13 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: June 2013, front cover

203 CUENCA, ECUADOR (opposite bottom left) Signed and dated 2013 Inscribed with title and ‘Int Living’ and dated 22/3/2013 on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄2 inches

204 VILCAMBA ECUADOR WHERE TO RETIRE ON THE CHEAP: FIVE GREAT-VALUE TOWNS (opposite bottom right) Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘Vilcamba Ecuador’ and ‘International Living cover’ and dated ‘April 2012’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 21 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: April 2012, front cover

3:4 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER DESTINATIONS | 93

201 PLAZA DE LA INDEPENCIA QUITO THE WORLD’S BEST RETIREMENT HAVENS Signed and dated 2013 Inscribed ‘Plaza De La Indepencia Quito’ and ‘International Living’ and dated ‘Jan 2013’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 17 inches Illustrated: January 2013, front cover

202 FOUR EASY HAVENS CLOSE TO PANAMA CITY Signed and dated 2012 Inscribed ‘Panama – Beach’ and ‘International Living cover for 2012’ on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 20 1⁄2 x 16 1⁄2 inches Illustrated: February 2012, front cover

94 | 3:4 AMERICA AND BEYOND: OTHER DESTINATIONS

205 CYCLE TOURS Signed Inscribed with title on reverse Pen ink and watercolour 26 x 16 inches

PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 95

Paul Cox Journeys through his Art A London Childhood David Wootton: Do you have any strong early recollections of London?

Paul Cox: The family home, where I spent my childhood, was a large Georgian house in Grove Terrace, Dartmouth Park, on the foothills leading to Highgate Village. There were large Georgian and Victorian and houses in the surrounding area, with deep, long gardens; it was all very leafy. I loved the house and the area, and they had quite a significant impact on me, so that I have returned to live nearby. Until the age of eight, when I went away to school, my horizons were limited to this location. I wasn’t a free agent in London, and didn’t travel around on my own. However, we had a lot of freedom as kids, as we were allowed to roam about on Hampstead Heath, and in the mews behind our house.

We used to play a lot in this mews. For days, we seemed to march up and down with dustbin lids as shields or go-cart up and down the lane. We also tobogganed and flew kites on the heath. It was a nice sort of life.

The road itself was quite quiet, apart from the King’s Troop, which would go by about four o’clock every morning, on its exercise. They have at least 40 horses, with one rider for each three horses, and you could hear the sound of them for miles. There was a chap at the front with a white light, and a chap at the back with a red light attached to his leg.

It was a very magical thing to watch out of the window, and see this all go past. Funnily enough, following our recent return to London, I heard them again. I couldn’t believe it!

They’ve moved their barracks to somewhere else, but they did do their exercising up Swain’s Lane, just by chance.

And they did go by. It was almost as if to say, ‘welcome back! The King’s Troop is here! We haven’t forgotten you!’

The area was a bit like a village, so that everyone knew each other, and a lot of neighbourhood kids would stay in our house. On two occasions we went out in the middle of the night, without my parents’ knowledge, onto the grass area between the houses in Highgate Road, and we frolicked around in our dressing gowns at one o’clock in the morning.

The second time, there would have been 10 or 11 of us on the grass, when a car pulled over and we hid behind trees.

A policeman got out, and said, ‘I know you’re there’. It was terrifying. He then added, ‘where do you live?’, and I pointed at the house. I vividly remember him pressing the doorbell of our house, and my mother, who used to go to bed with a hairnet, opened the door. The policeman said, ‘are these

An interview with David Wootton

your children?’ She was so astonished to see that we were all out there, and said, ‘ooh, yes’, and we went in. Though she was very angry, she didn’t punish us, and didn’t tell anyone until a year later; she then found it quite amusing, seeing it as against herself. I remember her saying, ‘are these your children?!’

And do you remember being brought into town by your parents?

A bit. My dad, an architect, had his office in Bedford Square, in a big Georgian townhouse. In fact, my dad spent his whole life in Bedford Square, because he trained at the AA, and then had his practice there.

And you visited his office?

I would go a lot. As he was on the top floor, we used to throw water bombs out of his windows at passers-by; the Bedford Square houses are tall, so there was a really big splat on the pavement. It was a large architectural practice with planners, transport engineers, etcetera, all in that office together. So going there was quite important.

We also spent a lot of time at Hamleys. At Christmas time, mum would leave my two younger sisters and me in Hamleys for the day, while she’d go off shopping elsewhere, coming back occasionally to check that we were still there.

We’d have an enjoyable time, trying out all these toys, as though it was almost a place designed for children to be left.

And, again, I used to be left at the Everyman, that very nice cinema in Hampstead, when my mum was out shopping.

I saw all the Marx Brother films, all the Laurel and Hardy films, all the Buster Keaton films … And they were run back to back. So I’d be there for the whole day in the cinema, seeing all these fantastic films …

An Early Success PC: From when I was very small, I made portraits, drawing my family. One significant artistic advance occurred while I was at Gospel Oak Primary School. I had got behind at school, as I was then severely dyslexic and had missed a year of education through serious illness. There were some awful teachers who were real bullies, and didn’t give you any time or help, so that in the end I was left at the back of the class to do whatever I wanted. This was when I was about six or seven. I then started painting huge pictures of Mediaeval and

96 | PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART

Tudor figures, like Henry VIII and his wives. I used to like building Airfix models, and had a series of Mediaeval and Tudor figures, including one of Henry VIII. I knew about all his wives, that he cut their heads off, and they were all quite gory and interesting. And I’d seen some photographs or pictures. Because I’d built the model, I knew where the armour was, so I could do that and get it right. The resulting drawings were bigger than me, huge, on long lining paper.

When it came to the school show at the end of term, all the pupils had their work put up in the classroom, but my five or six pictures were so large that they were put up in the hallway outside. I don’t think my parents were even going to come to the school, but the headmaster phoned them and said, ‘you must come down and see what Paul has done’.

And this was because the school inspectors had been around, and the only thing they were interested in were my pictures. It was the first time that there was a moment and a meaning to painting, doing something like that on my own account. I was completely deficient in other aspects of my education, but I could do something that would attract people’s attention, and that really struck me.

Inspiration: Peggy Angus PC: When I was slightly older, my Dad met a very interesting woman through his work: the artist, designer and teacher, Peggy Angus. She was a very strong influence in that we’d go to stay in her little cottage at Furlongs, on the Sussex Downs. It wasn’t that long after Eric Ravilious and that lot had been there with her, and so all of their stuff was there, and the furniture that he had bought or used. It was a magical place.

Peggy was a great teacher, and a very big part of my life. She always believed that her son, Angus, who had died, was sending her boys. And every now and again one would come along who would take his place. So I would be a kind of helper, and carry her bags. We often went to Furlongs, just the two of us. I also went with her to Barra, in the Outer Hebrides. So I spent a lot of time with her.

I must have been about seven or eight the first time we went to stay at Furlongs for a weekend. I remember it vividly because we picked Peggy up from a friend of hers in London and she was completely rat-arsed, having drunk gin all afternoon. Like some little Victorian lady, she had a little black hat, a black coat, a black cloak, a bunch of red cherries that she was eating – and a bright red face from all the gin she’d been drinking. My youngest sister, who was only a baby, was quite frightened. We were supposed to get off early, to beat the traffic, and there she was having to have a little rest after all the gin she’d put away. By seven or eight

o’clock in the evening my father thought we’d better set off, and by the time we got to the house it was pitch black. We were still all a bit scared, in this strange house down the end of a long lane, with no electrics, no lights, all a bit smelly.

There was all this food and stuff in some pantry, where the mice could always get at it, and she said, ‘right, let’s all have liver and bacon’. So we all sat down at midnight eating liver and bacon. The following day, she set us all to draw outside on the table, that table with the umbrella in Ravilious’s famous picture. That’s where we did these big drawings in sheep markers, in bright colours: blue, red and green.

We lived in a rather comfortable middle-class environment, and this was really at the frontier of slummy Bohemianism.

It was rustic chaos. There was no electricity; only oil lamps.

This was necessary, but it had a very Romantic effect.

DW: At a distance, it does seem very Romantic, and the Ravilious watercolours and Edwin Smith photographs make it seem charming. However, I’m sure that actually being there wasn’t always that charming.

It wasn’t. And there was an Elsan. Someone had to take turns to dig a hole to put it in. We used to say, if you can manage to go for the whole weekend without having to use it for anything serious you were doing well. You would try to avoid the unpleasantness of it.

Peggy was extraordinarily enthusiastic, and she gave an awful lot of encouragement to you when you were trying to do drawings or paintings. It almost elevated your sense as an artist, and made you believe that it was completely the right thing to do. The other great thing she believed in was what she called ‘creative patronage’. She produced these great long theses based on William Morris about the role of art in our society, and how it should be valued and incorporated and supported by the commercial world. She said the idea of art for its own sake was masturbation, and people who went off to do their own thing, just to please themselves, were in the wrong. She was always bringing it back to the role of the artist in a progression. There’s the client, and someone fulfilling a role …

In a strange way, it was a great preparation for you.

It was, because you sense that you’re fulfilling a need but also exercising your own talents. It opened a door in my mind that being an artist was a valid route to take in my life.

So I have a lot of influences to be thankful for: my father, in one respect, for opening my mind to observation, drawing outside and drawing the process, and realising that you can present on a piece of paper an idea or a composition, an arrangement of things that have appealed to you; then, with

PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 97

Peggy, the role of the artist in an integrated society, having a role to fulfil. So the two, in their ways, were particularly formative people.

Of course. Did you meet any another artists when you were down at Furlongs?

Quite a few artists … well Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan were there. My Dad had a lot of Fedden paintings. I didn’t know Julian’s work very well then, but I remember I was doing watercolours of Furlongs at the time and showing them to them, and they were polite …

But still, it was an environment in which there was implicit encouragement.

Yes, I think so. There was also a lot of other artists’ work around, including one of Ravilious’s paintings of a Romantic farm, called Muggery Poke. I once thought, ‘I want to live there one day’, and found it. It’s on the other side of the hill in a lovely south-facing combe, just on the other side of Firle Beacon, and it has a tree growing up inside the farmhouse.

Well, he had painted it and torn it up because it wasn’t very good and Peggy had got all the bits together and stuck them together, and it was up on the wall. So this picture of halffailed Muggery Poke was always on my mind. And she also had a lovely big painting by Bawden of Newhaven Harbour in her studio in the Camden Town Studios.

Peggy always believed in being a proper artist, and not a fulltime teacher. So she never had a pension. She had very little money, but she had a house in Adelaide Road, on the railway line, which was demolished in the 60s. And she was then re-housed in a lovely new self-contained studio, which was built in Camden Town.

Something that really endeared me to Peggy was that she had no pride, in that she never felt above anyone. Although she had a lot of very wealthy friends and required the patronage of affluent people, she was completely equal with everybody. She would have these art classes for the local women’s institute. All the old ladies who went to her art classes were there just to do some knitting, or paint some furniture, or put pictures on things. She called it Art for Love. You do it because you love doing it and you love the people you’re doing it for. It was a very simple philosophy and it was very true. She had the big communal studio to have the class in, and other artists would be able to participate if they wanted. I helped Peggy with the class, and so did my Dad for a time and another artist called Hugh Dunford Wood.

The more you were with her the more you learned all sorts of things about her ideas about art. She was both naïve and

sophisticated. As a painter, she was quite naïve, working in a kind of 30s style and never greatly developing. I even painted some of her skies on one of the commissions she had for Glynde Place, for she was painting and said, ‘I can’t be bothered, you can do some clouds’. What was hugely sophisticated and done in such a simple way were her designs, and especially her wallpaper designs. We had them in our house in Grove Terrace. They were bright red, orange on black or very dark brown. They were so rich and yet … all it was was lining paper, painted rather thinly with a layer of emulsion paint. And hand-block printed with lino blocks, which were inked by a brush as well, so they were always splodgy and irregular. But the overall effect was incredibly rich by just very simple techniques. She had books of colours, and they were all standard British colour emulsion paints, so you could always get to the same colour.

If someone ordered a particular design, she knew, she’d make it … And there were a few girls, who were quite patient printers, who she’d have working there. I did a bit of printing, but I couldn’t ... But it was terribly repetitive.

Peggy was extraordinary really. Dad went to see the art show at the North London Collegiate School, where she taught, and he was astonished by the calibre of the work that she was getting out of the kids. And he took lots of photographs of it. She got them all to paint things, even those without much ability. That’s what was so good about her teaching. It was not just for the few flowers who were particularly good but for everyone. For example, she got each of them to paint a flower on a dark background, six inches square; so however bad your flower was, it still had the same form. Then she stuck them all on the ceiling like a huge patchwork quilt. And it looked like one of those mediaeval ceilings with all these little flowers. It was fantastic, and a vision of cohesive collaboration. All the kids participated, and felt validated and rewarded. And it was perfect teaching. She was the perfect teacher.

Even going up to the dew pond on the downs, where we’d go for summer parties, have a bonfire, sing lots of songs …

She used to sing a song about Venezuela, I remember. She was born in Chile, the daughter of a Scottish engineer, so anything South American had a particular romance to her.

She always wore a little fez, and a funny little cloth jerkin, with little Celtic designs on. She was a remarkable woman and, talking about her now, I realise what an important part she played in my young life.

I have some funny drawings of her, of our times in Furlongs and Barra. I remember, while in Barra, building a very smelly little hut for her out of fish boxes to keep her dry while she sang one of her little tunes. I was terribly fond of her, and she of me. We were kind of like a little couple really. It was quite sweet.

98 | PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART

So how old would you have been by the time you did that then?

When I went to Barra, I would have been about nineteen, but I’d been down to Furlongs on quite a few occasions.

Education: Ray Evans DW: You went away to school …

PC: I went to two very small boys’ schools, Port Regis in Shaftesbury, Dorset, and Stanbridge Earls in Romsey, Hampshire. The first was a prep school for Bryanston, which my father thought I might go to. I think I would have got the common entrance, but by the time it came to it I couldn’t stand the sight of the place, and then I was diagnosed as dyslexic. The school that I did go to was a much smaller school, which had a lot of kids with different types of learning difficulties, all of whom had probably failed to get into the public schools that their parents had wanted them to go to. But it was a very good school, and they had a very high respect for artwork. All the kids did art ‘O’ Level in their first year, and that gave them some reward and some encouragement to go on.

The art teacher there was a commercial artist, called Ray Evans, who was a very accomplished watercolour painter.

Like Peggy, he was a part-time artist, and did a lot of commercial work and very successful painting. However, unlike Peggy, I felt that he was a bit reluctant to teach, and had just a few students who enjoyed art and were enthusiastic, and whom he would spend the time with – and they included me. He was excited about what we did and developed a rapport with us. We got on very well together, and I learned an enormous amount from the guy.

Evans put colour on quite thickly and would then take it off with very intriguing washes, almost over-painting, and then taking it back and using the brush deftly. And I learned a lot about drawing with him, observation drawing. Again I did large paintings, such as the exam pieces I did for my ‘A’ Level. Some were gouache and some were watercolour.

Like Evans, I’d put the colour on very quickly and then take it off with a scrubbing brush, so that the lines of the brush would become directional, a little bit like the lines of gum in some recent works. You’re actually drawing with the way you’re pulling the colour off. You run the water over … This was an exam piece, so you know that, if I’d destroyed it, there’d have been no chance of my ever having the time to do it again. So there was an element of risk there that was also exciting. But those were good paintings. There was a huge one of a marshalling yard with old engines and tracks going away. I love drawing machinery and industrial

archaeology, quite a nice thing to have in a picture.

I took all my art exams before I did any other ‘A’ Levels. I did Botany, Zoology and Geography for ‘A’ Level, because my parents wanted me to get those academic subjects as insurance, in case I didn’t go to art college or I changed my mind. I really knew I would go to art college, but don’t regret having done those subjects. I did a lot of drawing for Botany as well as Zoology, looking down microscopes and trying to understand all the miniature aspects.

I think I could have gone sooner to art school if I’d wanted to, but leaving this place is hard to describe. I was in this little school of no more than about 130 boys. It was very intimate, you knew all the teachers, who lived with their families. We did things out in the New Forest. It was very special really. So coming back to London, aged 18, was quite a shock after being in that sort of very rarefied environment.

Having won two prizes from the National Portraiture Association, I thought that this art school thing was going to be a doddle.

Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts DW: What was your general impression of coming back to London?

PC: I was absolutely longing for it. I have always loved London. I mean I think it’s in my blood, and I recognise, belatedly, perhaps, that it was somewhere I perhaps shouldn’t have left, but I’m glad I had because I appreciate it more. I think you are conscious of things at some point in your life that are significant to you and have a bearing on your kind of emotional and romantic compass. The London element is a holdfast for me, whether I am away from it or here.

So, coming back to London to start at Camberwell was exciting for you.

Definitely – though I had rather an abrupt and abrasive beginning, thinking I was the bees knees, and then suddenly being told that you are down there and really you’ve got to start right from the beginning again. During the Foundation Course, we worked a six-day week. You’d be working all of the time, all of those days, putting in a lot of hours. We did a lot of drawing, including at least two and a half days of life drawing, a day of painting from the model and another day, Saturday, sculpting from a model. I did a whole year of sculpture with a full-size standing figure, one sculpture. The connection with the model and the observation drawing were very religiously adhered to, and the traditions were so

PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 99

rich that they were tangible. You could see exactly what the ideology was and whether or not you wanted to follow it.

The tests were very stringent, and included some very elaborate and difficult things to draw, like grids with apples on them and spatial things you had to work out; also perspective, varieties of colour and tone, and looking at master paintings in museums. You can’t do a course like that anymore. It was really intense. I mean, one year’s work was equivalent to what most students now would do in three years. It was hard work, but I learned; actually, I think I did most of my learning on that Foundation Course.

And did you realise that at the time?

No, I didn’t. I just thought that this is a preparation for what I’m going to choose to do. Then when I chose to do Graphics, the painters were aghast because they thought I was just up their street and the sculptors were aghast because they thought that I was going to do sculpture.

Because I was so committed doing all this stuff they thought I was right for going into their discipline. I got upset because they never recognised watercolour as being a valid thing to be doing.

They saw it as a sort of betrayal?

Yes. I did watercolours for the ‘crits’, and the big painting tutors, like John Hoyland and Co, would come down to do the ‘crits’ and walk straight past the painting. They wouldn’t even acknowledge it was there on the wall, let alone say this is a crappy watercolour so we’re not going to consider it.

And so, as a sort of exercise, I did an interior of our house in London, at Grove Terrace, a view through the window in oil paint, exactly in the Camberwell tradition with rather subdued colours. I did it all, as almost saying I can do this but I’m not choosing to do this; I can do, and I’ll do one. Of course, they came to this picture and went on about all the things that were right about it. And I told myself that I can’t really spend three years with these painting tutors forcing me into something that I’m not comfortable with, all this tradition of the Euston Road Group. There was purity to it, because it’s all about the natural light and rather dingy life classes with an electric heater and a sad life model sitting on a bit of hessian looking rather cold. Sickert is fine, but he’d done it all, and I wasn’t in that camp. And I certainly wasn’t in the sculpture camp, although I liked it a lot. So when I picked Graphics, one chap said, ‘you’re prostituting your art’, as if I’d committed some terrible sin. And it upset me a bit because I had a love of my own.

I’d always been very lucky at college with teachers. The tutor I had on the Foundation Course was Eileen Hogan, the

painter, and we got on very well. There were three or four of us in Foundation who did as much printmaking as anything else, and Eileen liked our prints so much that she gave us a little exhibition in her school. And that was really nice, to put our prints up. We found a way of doing intaglio lino blocks with a lot of pressure on the Albion Press pushing the paper into all the little reveals. Eileen must’ve just been out of college herself very recently, and she went to be a tutor in Graphics as we went to Graphics – so we all went together into the Graphics Department. So I had a painter teaching me Illustration, and her love of typography and lettering and book production all contributed to my education, and she really enhanced the validity of watercolour and of observation drawing.

Again, I was extremely fortunate to have Linda Kitson at Camberwell. I missed half of my second year because I was ill, and when I came back Linda was at the college. She did something extraordinary, which was to have a life class full of exotic burlesque dancing girls with lovely music and fantastic costumes. There was Linda with a little waistcoat and a little pencil round her neck, all frightfully punky and exciting, and she met an exotic girl at a party and asked her to come and model, and she made use of all her grandparents’ dressing up clothes. It was lovely. All the painters who heard about this crept into our classes and thought this was a lot of fun. All of a sudden, dear old Camberwell’s cobwebs got blown out by this great explosion.

And then, of course, Linda got Quentin Crisp to model for us. We did these little things like drawings of Quentin going on a journey. So there’s a narrative: in the beginning he’d be packing his suitcase, then he’d close it, then he’d be waiting at the station … all these different things. It was all part of Illustration really.

But the greatest thing Linda did was to set a project of drawing London, in my second or final year at Camberwell.

She said just go out and draw whatever you want in order to create a portrait of the city. And so for about a week or two I just walked everywhere, drawing anything I found in small, simple line drawings. I drew portraits of people I found in the street; ice cream vans, cars, motorbikes; various buildings. I remember drawing tramps in Leicester Square, including a profile of a fine looking chap. I had given him my sketchbook to amuse him while I was drawing so he’d stay still for a bit. So I was busy in my revelry of drawing when, in a moment, there was another chap standing beside him who then head-butted him. And all of a sudden these two chaps were on the floor fighting and my sketchbook was caught up with them. Afterwards I bought

100 | PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART

him some tea in a tea shop, and got him to talk about his life.

I was being confronted by how difficult and violent the city could be.

he very quickly made me feel uncomfortable about my own upbringing. And let’s face it I was extremely lucky to have had all of that.

Before that, I’d been working as a volunteer in a rehabilitation centre, or spike, in Peckham. I went there with two sculptress friends who shared a flat with me, and we worked at an art class in the evening. There were people at the spike who’d been at art college and, having failed, were destitute. And we were having to encourage them to do drawings of things. It was rather brutal actually, to have to face having been brought up in a very privileged environment, and having had a very rarefied education.

The London Landscape DW: In making images of London, were there unique characteristics of place or people that you would try to emphasise? What do you think constitutes Paul Cox’s London?

An impressive thing for you to have done though …

Well I think it confused me, actually, about life.

So your experiences at Camberwell certainly increased your knowledge of London?

Yes. It was a rather rude experience, because it’s a rougher part of town. During my foundation year, I lived at home, going up and down the Northern Line, which always took forever. Then Camberwell were given three hard-to-let council flats by Southwark to let to students, and I was lucky enough to get one. It was on the Aylesbury Estate, which was notorious, and pretty grim in places. But there were little stores, shops and markets around. So I became a Southwark council tenant, and shared the flat with two girls in sculpture. It was on the ground floor in one of these old 30s blocks, and no one on the waiting list wanted it because it was vulnerable. It was a three-bedroom flat with a big sitting room, and was £7.50 between three of us. I mean it’s incredible.

Did you make drawings of the estate?

Not so much the estate, but I drew the market people.

However, you could get into town very quickly from there, on a bicycle, over Waterloo Bridge. That was a good thing about it. I lived there for 10 years or so, and learned about the rougher parts of the city. My best friend at the time had always been down there, and worked on a building site on the North Peckham Estate before he started at Camberwell.

I learned a little from him and from his father, who had a stall at the rag and bone end of East Street market, and I liked them both very much. He once said to me, ‘I must be the first pauper you’ve known’. It was a real shock to realise that he saw me as an affluent middle-class boy who was sort of slumming it, while he’d grown up in the place. He was a highly intelligent, sophisticated and knowledgeable chap, but

01

PC: I think it’s the feeling of a place, and how the whole thing – the figures, the building – fits together. It’s all milling and melding together into one thing. It’s like that picture of the Michelin building [01]. I find that if you get very near to a building, you can enhance and distort certain elements to make more of its significant character, almost to the point of caricature. So you can say, well this building has a particular shape, or a balcony, or a decorative device. Then you get really near to it, and big it up, I suppose. And if you can do that with a building you like, you can then put figures around it doing something or interacting with it, such as a person getting out of a taxi or selling flowers … The figures, the building, the event become united, and the process of getting that kind of image to work has to be done in situ.

The very fact that you’ve been able to look at that balcony and see that decorative device in order to bring the building alive: do you think that your father had an affect on you being able to parse a building?

He was one who could sum up a building very quickly, understanding not only why things were as they were on the outside, but exactly what was on the inside, just by knowing where the windows were, where all the drains were going, the size of the bricks. You know instantly how something was constructed, and why. And just by the structure of the roof, the chimney pots, all of these things give little clues to what’s going on inside. You see the pipes – the soil pipes,

PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 101

the water pipes – and all the detritus that houses need to function come out of different places in it, so you roughly know where all the services are as opposed to the reception rooms, and where the staircase is likely to be positioned, and how deep the chimney breasts are. You know, you can sum up a building very quickly from the outside without getting in.

Of course. You gained something of that from him …

Oh, definitely, yes …

And, by extension of that, you can almost read the people who used that building into it as well.

A little bit. Well, you imagine them in there and it’s a fascinating little hobby to think about these things. But one wonderful thing about London is that there is a constant variety of stimulating images to see. You know, you suddenly realise how much of that you’ve been missing when you haven’t had it for a bit. When you’re living in a lovely, tranquil place like Sussex, with no traffic noise and none of these other things to trouble you – well life’s not about that. Living where we do now, in London, there are people milling around: chaps on bikes, women with prams, the school run in the morning … Even if you’re not actually drawing it, you’re seeing these things. I just enjoy being on the tube, the bus and, when I lived in Sussex, I used to tease people that I wanted to smell the tube, and take that particular scent back home.

Both Hogarth and Gentleman are able to disassociate themselves from themselves while they’re drawing. They can visualise a vantage point that is different from the one they’re at. I am terribly affected by everything that’s going on around me at head height. It’s all in front of me, figures here, figures there coming at me, which is telling the story of the experience of being there at the time, which I am affected by and end up drawing. Whereas, both Hogarth and Gentleman, in their different ways, are able to stand 20 feet above their heads, completely change the picture plane, horizon line and all, to generate a different sort of narrative, which is about place rather than about people. So they will tell the story of buildings in front of one another, that you cannot see when you are on the ground but are there, and use three or four levels of perspective, because they are putting a patina of things in front of one another …

But you can do that …

I can’t do that!

You can, because we have that example, of the Royal Albert Hall [02]. It shows you can do it.

Have you been affected by other artists who have specialised in London, Ardizzone for instance?

Edward Ardizzone, David Gentleman, Paul Hogarth, Feliks Topolski … all of those that have drawn and painted London have had a great influence.

I found some really interesting Topolski drawings of London in the V&A, very loose pictures, which are quite simple, just done after the war. There is an exquisite simplicity, like some of the earlier stuff that he did of Paris. They could hardly be beaten, actually. I find he almost knocks Delacroix into a cocked hat. The quality of draughtsmanship is superb.

Again Paul Hogarth’s use of perspective is extraordinary. I did meet him once, because I was going to Cape Town, and wanted some advice about drawing in South Africa. Linda Kitson gave me his number, and I called him, and he said, ‘oh yeah, come and have a chat’. I went to see him at his studio in Primrose Hill, and we had a nice conversation about drawing. However, he did rather pull rank though, because he said, ‘in Cape Town, I was travelling with Doris Lessing and drawing where she went!’

02

Yes, I can do it, but I couldn’t do that outside. I find that very hard to draw on the spot.

Ok. So to make a drawing like that you’d have to do it at one remove.

I have to plan it, working out what I am going to do first.

There is a very interesting drawing that Hogarth made of a little Mid West town, where he’s got four or five levels going away into the distance. The foreground comprises a shack type building with a few figures and telegraph poles.

102 | PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART

Then there’s the subsequent middle distance, images of buildings behind those. If you start low enough down the page on a vertical portrait shape, you do this block of work here and, working your way up, can get this sense of space and distance. In the end, you have a story of the whole town and the kind of buildings that are all there. He had a fantastic ability to do that. I love those drawings.

Recently, I was teaching in France, and we were using Hogarth’s book, Drawn from Life, and someone said, ‘you’re in this book’. And he gives me a mention! It was so sweet.

He said, some young illustrators now working in this field include … and he mentions Glynn Boyd Harte and me. I was so chuffed! But his London images are particularly rich, I think.

So, with something like the Royal Albert Hall, to what degree are you relying on your knowledge and imagination, and to what degree are you using reference images?

I had to do this book called Look out London!, which again comprises aerial pictures of London, a lot of which were done on foot, so that I looked up at a building and tried to imagine what it looked like from above. This was before Google Earth, where you can look at all the roof patterns.

It’s a real doddle now, but then there were very few aerial photographs. There was an aerial photo of the Albert Hall, but I didn’t have it at the time I did that image. I had to do it all from drawings. So I did a lot of drawings there, trying to work out what the roof was doing and I don’t think I got it completely right, but it was based on observation drawings alone.

But again your father’s influence was probably a help …

Yes, it would have been a huge amount of help.

Having come back to London now, do you think it’s changed or it’s more that you’ve changed?

Both have changed a lot. You just grow up a bit and realise more what you need from life and what you like and are more discerning. The less life you have left, the more you want to make sure the life you have is the right kind of life.

You don’t want to feel displaced. I think London has changed a lot, and it is a lot more enjoyable. One of the things I like about cities is seeing people out and about, drinking, eating and enjoying themselves, and that’s what you get a lot more of in London. Terraces and cafes now occupy all the pavements, and throughout the year you see people in flimsy clothes sitting outside with a Cappuccino.

You’d never have imagined 10 or 15 years ago that that would happen.

Literary Illustrations DW: Before we go on to talk about Europe, I’d like to ask about the literary illustrations. Do you essentially have to like what you’re illustrating, and have some sympathy for the text?

PC: You do a bit. I think that if you’re frustrated, as I sometimes have been by a commission – either the qualities of writing or the nature of the subject or the agenda of the art directors – then you start getting irritated, and this starts to undermine your ability to do anything good. I’m pretty easy most of the time, and will find some merit in most things. I think if you don’t have a sympathy or an empathy with the piece it’s much harder to make an image that’s going to do the significant job of interesting a reader and giving him a bit of information.

With some of your larger scale commissions – and you’ve illustrated a large number of books for The Folio society – have you ever said no?

To The Folio Society? I can’t afford to say no to The Folio Society!

But you’ve therefore been happy …

The books they’ve picked are ones that I have a huge affection for and it’s been a joy to do them. I found some of the choices a bit strange in the collections of comic short stories and after dinner stories, and thought that I’ve read funnier stories in my time. But that’s the only thing I’ve ever questioned. I mean Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals was a complete dream to do.

Again this is interesting from the perspective of being on the spot or not. My first major job, when I left the Royal College, was to do Somerville and Ross’s The Irish RM for The Folio Society. I went to Ireland – to Cork and Castletown, and all the areas where the stories were written. I got to know people who knew the authors, and did drawings of all the houses in which the stories were based. Indeed, I did a phenomenal amount of research because the fee was what I was used to living on for a whole year. And, when it came to doing the actual illustrations, I was a bit anxious, and they were quite tight and controlled.

All that preliminary work went into something that was actually a little bit unsatisfactory. So that was one example.

Now, with Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, I should’ve gone to Corfu, but there wasn’t time; so I thought I’ll just do it, follow the dream of the book, and get into the exuberance of the place in my mind. I felt that was truer than going, because it would’ve changed so much. And I was

PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 103

proved right because Lee Durrell – in showing the work in Jersey – said these villas that I’d drawn were exactly as they had been and there was nothing like that anymore. I did have one or two little photographs of what the villas had been like but that was just enough to show me the style.

But you were responding to the text, rather than to the place …

Yes, but the place – if I’d been there – wouldn’t have been like that. It was in my mind, so there’s an honesty or integrity in being imaginative as opposed to tying yourself right into reality.

And in terms of that three-way relationship in an illustrated book between the author, the illustrator and the reader: the reader doesn’t have to go to the place to sit and read the books so why should the illustrator?

Well the author’s been there …

Yes … Well, not always!

No. Well you are actually helping the author to take the reader to the place. The proof of the pudding is when someone like Lee Durrell says you got that absolutely right.

So, that meant an awful lot to me. A few other people have said that’s just spot on, and I like that when it happens because it’s quite a lonely business. You don’t have colleagues. However, I have had quite good rapport with certain authors that I’ve done a lot of work with, such as Tim Heald. He and I have had our little expeditions together, and had a lot of fun, even going down the Cresta Run, which I’d never have done in any other walk of life.

Perhaps that’s why I like working outside so much because it gets you out, and you do see other people.

So when you set about illustrating, say, a P G Wodehouse, you read through the text or you listen to it …

I have to do quite a lot of serious reading. I always read in a quiet place, with an A4 paper pad or paper, on which I will do very quick pencil drawings. And I use the same method with a lot of illustrating. I will do very quick pencil responses on my initial reading so they’re very immediate. There’ll be probably five or six to a page so they’re quite small. And I’ll make little notes of the chapter and of the likely positions of the drawings, and any little details like who’s wearing what.

P G Wodehouse is quite complicated because you’ve got to check the characters and buildings are consistent with the way you’ve drawn them before. So there’s a lot of continuity, as in a film, that you have to be aware of. And when I’m reading, the most important thing is to be true to the initial personal response, when a gem of a thing was in your mind and that little pencil drawing contains all the essence of an idea; and quite often all those little line drawings develop into the finished illustrations in some form. They either get demoted to vignettes or they creep up into important double-page spreads, so that’s the sort of size and impact I want those drawings to have in the text. In the 15 or so P G Wodehouse books that I have done with Folio, Joe Whitlock Blundell and I hardly ever had an issue with the location of the drawing in the text. We worked out the images so that they did not predict or give away anything. Anyway, that’s how I work; I do these little pencil things and they grow into bigger drawings. It’s a process of development, and I will do the same with most assignments, even when I’m on the phone to a client who’s describing a job … actually I’m never on the phone now, they always email me. Sometimes, if the first reaction is not really working, I have to revisit the text and try and summon something else up in its place, but generally it does usually work, the first idea.

So if you’ve never said no to The Folio Society, have they ever asked you what you would like to illustrate?

On Location: Europe and Beyond They’ve said no to me. The book I desperately wanted was Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, which I illustrated for them for a competition, and won the second prize with. I have a lot of affection for the book, because the comic and emotional elements are all exquisitely drawn, and its quite a test in illustration to connect a drawing to a moment in the text without undermining any punch line or climax (as it is with P G Wodehouse). That was the book I wanted to do, but when the time came they picked someone else to do it.

However, I think that’s their prerogative. Their tastes change and their clients change, and I’ve done over 20 books with them so they probably think it’s time someone else did a bit.

DW: Moving on to Europe: you have told me that, even as a child, you had experiences of the Continent, going quite regularly to the South of France. Did you go to any other European countries when you were younger?

PC: We went to Yugoslavia once and a few times to Italy, but we didn’t travel generally very much in Europe. France was the main place that we’d go to.

104 | PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART

game and will stand over you. Some people just end up standing by you for ages, because they don’t think you’re paying them very much attention because you’re concentrating. They start telling you about their life story, and their marriage problems and all sorts of weird personal stuff. Once, when I was working outside in New York, a woman crossed the road and, seeing that I was freezing, said ‘get a hat and some gloves. It’s too cold’. I thought that was quite good advice really.

139

And you developed affection for it, particularly for Uzès [139 & 141] and the surrounding area?

Yes. And so the commission from The Sunday Times in 1984, to illustrate Spanish stories by Norman Lewis, was one of the first times you were in Europe on your own?

It’s the first time I’d been to Spain, I think, and one of the first times I’d been on my own.

There’s obviously a split in your European images, as across your work, between those that have been commissioned and those you’ve done for your own pleasure. Is France still the country that you know best in Europe?

Probably; France and Spain, and Italy a bit, and not really many other countries … I’ve done various assignments in those countries. I did a lovely job for Veuve Clicquot drawing their wine cellars, which was quite intriguing.

Reader’s Digest sent me to draw Krakow in Poland.

However, I don’t often get sent to places by magazines.

That’s something I loved hugely about Blueprint magazine, because we did Barcelona, Milan, New York … and were only there for about four days in each, so I had to decide how I felt about a place and get out drawing like mad. I tried to look for interesting and striking buildings that I wanted to work with, and worked very quickly. I found very exciting the challenge of doing drawings for publication on location, with all the elements, of figure, light and architecture, working together. It’s a juggling act actually and that was a lot of pressure, but the pressure was intoxicating.

A lot of things happen when you’re working on location.

Perhaps the most absurd occurrence was that of a child who balanced a toy car on my head, while I was sitting drawing in France. It’s always fatal to sit down when you’re drawing because everyone sort of thinks that you’re fair

But as an artist and illustrator, who often conjures up the life of a place through its people, can you absorb these experiences into your drawings?

You don’t absorb them. You just switch off really. You have to have some blinkers. There’s an awful moment when you start working anywhere outside, particularly if there are a lot of people around who will look at what you’re doing.

When you have a large piece of paper, which is generally about A1, you’re standing up with a board resting on your hip. You are so exposed that, whatever you’re doing, people will want to see it. And before you start work, it’s very unnerving to think that you’re accountable for this drawing that everyone’s going to see. The first few moments are the most uncomfortable, when you’re most acutely aware of this sense of anxiety; then, after about ten minutes, the drawing claims your full attention and it doesn’t matter then what happens. You’re content because you’re working, and you’re in this world of the drawing.

So is it the fact that there’s nothing on the paper that causes the anxiety?

It’s a bit of a problem. There was a very keen example of this in Spain, when I did the Norman Lewises. One of his stories was of a fiesta in the middle of a square: lots of people were dancing, drinking, and having a jolly time. But, of course, I couldn’t find one, and, as so often on this project, I had to manipulate the real world to suit the stories. I’d been in a restaurant or café beforehand, and I’d seen some local characters I’d drawn in my sketchbook. And I thought that they’d provide a good cast for this fiesta. So I found a square, which was very suitable for this drawing, with the back end of a big church and nice buildings. I then drew people as if dancing there, with someone pouring a flagon of wine, a couple holding each other – quite a sweet little scene. I had to get all these figures right before I drew the square. It was fine because there was nobody in the square, so I got all this activity down on the paper. And then I just started to draw the back end of the church, when some American tourists came into the square and made a b-line straight to me drawing. They saw this picture with all these

PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 105

people in it, and said, ‘where has everybody gone?’ And I said, ‘they weren’t ever there’, feeling embarrassed and making an excuse about my dishonesty!

That was quite early in your career. But you’d still feel like that now?

Yes, I still feel a bit queasy.

It’s as if you’re accountable to the people who are watching you.

You are, yes. They do have a sort of effect on you. As I was drawing on a big pad in the main square in downtown Kingston, Jamaica – where no white people go – characters on the other side of the road were shouting at me, ‘CIA go away’. They thought I was doing some sort of report, but I was sweating away and trying to do a drawing. Eventually, they came up and saw what I was doing. Immediately, there’s no threat because they see I’m struggling, and they find it quite amusing, because I don’t have an expensive camera or anything showy. And there’s a respect for the fact that you’re doing a job of work, of sorts, which they can read. So, for about half an hour, these beefy West Indian chaps, who had been shouting at me, watched every stroke that I made, and were joined by others, creating a little posse of about 15 people. Then a woman started walking towards me, who was carrying a bundle of something on her head, and I put her in this drawing just to give it a sense of space, with a few little lines. They all looked up and saw this character and they thought it was like magic! She was there and then she was there! It was so funny. And they all pointed at her, laughing away. She didn’t know what had happened, and she had to come and see … You become like a little street entertainment. I haven’t drawn in India but I know from people who know that it is incredibly difficult for the same reasons.

There is something quite primitive about the way people respond to the activity of drawing, almost like storytelling.

It is a bit. I think that they are interested in seeing what you see in what is familiar to them, and that’s why the camera is so different. You are not making a picture there. You are taking it, and removing it. The camera’s got the image inside it, and you go away with it, and work on it later.

been quite friendly to them. And this guy was just being aggressive and unpleasant. And I said, ‘look, I can’t, I’ve drawn in Jamaica for 30 years, and I’ve never had anyone say anything like this to me before. I’m really upset’. I stood my ground, and said, ‘look, if I pay you 20 dollars for this house … how many houses have I got in my drawing here?’

And he looked. There were a lot of different buildings. I said, ‘this is going to cost me a lot of money, because I have to give all these people 20 dollars.’ He started to understand that this was irrational. He shouldn’t have asked me. But it put me in a bad humour, and consequently it affects my feelings and my drawing. The experience of the place is very much reflected in the manner of the drawing, and that’s what’s so conspicuous in the deceit of doing it from a photograph.

Rome DW: For this exhibition, Chris Beetles took you off to Rome, so we might use that trip as an example of you drawing in Europe.

It’s a commission for an exhibition rather than for a publication, but can you give me some idea of how you approached drawing the city? How long were you there?

PC: It was my first visit, and I think I was there for about a week. To begin with, Chris and I would go off very early in the morning on a little recce to look at some intriguing places, which I’d note down in my sketchbook as things that would be worth returning to when there was more time.

However, going anywhere with other people who have other agendas isn’t easy. As well as taking me round the city, Chris wanted to eat as much good food as possible! So when he was there, we had some very jolly times in lovely restaurants having fantastic food.

When Chris had left, I started work very early in the morning before it got too hot or too busy. I also like the low, early light rather than the very high, deep shadows that you get in the middle of the day. There are some drawings of some quite big, pretty places, like the Trevi Fountain [111] or the Spanish Steps [110]. A lot of people gather in

The only uncomfortable incident I had in Jamaica was a year or two ago at the lovely little town of Port Antonio, which I’ve drawn in a lot. Again a huge group of people were surrounding me as I did a drawing. And a chap came up to me very aggressively, saying, ‘you have to give me 20 dollars for drawing my house’. And the guys around me who were watching were rather upset by this. They thought this was not really fair. They’d been enjoying seeing me draw, and I’d 110

106 | PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART

those locations during the day, and I didn’t want to be prevented from drawing these exciting things. On one occasion, I was drawing at a fountain, when a stallholder asked me to move on. When I refused, he assembled his stand of little statuary and stuff all around me. I wasn’t going to budge and he wasn’t going to budge. Things like that are rather amusing to look back on, but at the time they are intensely frustrating. When you’ve spent an hour or so drawing something, you can’t suddenly move into a different position, because everything is totally changed and, unless you intend to do that, from whatever perspective, changing the image, you don’t want to move for someone else.

Was there a particular criterion for your choice of subjects?

I was drawn to some subjects for the rich texture in the stone, in the archaeology, and amused by the contrasts between very old things and the city as it is lived in now. I liked the Vespas and the newspaper stands and people milling around – the life of a city that goes on amongst all this fantastic antiquity. The contrasts of those things in all of Italy I find very interesting.

Yes, you capture that contrast very well, for instance between the sculptures of Castor and Pollux and the Vespas underneath [124].

It’s actually more than display, as I see it, because the feeling of Baroque is exuberance really. I didn’t know I had this in my sensibility until I went there, and I’m glad that Chris introduced me to it. It is about embellishment and an explosion of rotund, rolling shapes that come out at you. Rome really comes at you, doesn’t it? Everything – the statuary, the buildings, the forms, the columns – it’s all in your face.

It’s larger than life.

It is larger than life, and it’s active, it’s got a spirit to it, which affects you. The rhythm of it seemed to work with the arabesques and curves and lines that I do with my brush.

I was carried by that quite nicely. And it also made me think about the South American cathedrals that I’ve been doing for the covers of International Living, and I suddenly realised what Spain is doing all over South America. It was building these huge Baroque cathedrals, phenomenal things, which the English would never ever have dreamed of doing in our Imperial conquests; but there they were, these huge things, and I suddenly had a real appetite for drawing these buildings … I think Rome has taught me something about my own inclinations – architecturally – about wanting to go with this exuberance, and let it push me on a bit and ride it.

I didn’t really understand that before, though I knew I liked those things.

For instance, in Rome you have concave or convex church facades, which are then enhanced by broken capitals over columns. The more you look at Borromini’s church of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, the less you can believe it at all. There is this rhythm and balance of concave and convex going on all the way up, and when you get up to the top, the spire rises as a spiral, going up to the top with a ball. And, as I was looking at this, I thought, this is like one of those helter skelter games; the ball could fall off and roll down the thing, then something would happen and the clock would go ‘bing!’ in order to tell you what the hour was.

124

The shape of those bikes is something suited to the Italians.

They are far more sporty than they used to be. There was something very charming about the old Vespas, but the new ones have a lot more bits sticking out around them.

Nevertheless, they are still very stylish and very much of the place, and I thought that they have just as much pictorial merit as these grand statues, because they are part of the life of the city.

It’s a city of display as well. You’ve drawn a number of great public spaces.

It’s very theatrical, like a kind of set design, comparable with somewhere like Portmeirion. It’s not quite a believable, real sort of place.

There are two drawings of it in the exhibition, one in the courtyard, which is quite formal, straight down the middle and very dramatic [117]. It is a very theatrical thing. The other is from the other side of the street, with all the Vespas and other business going on, and these fine things have to exist in all the turbulence and mess of the street [116].

That’s the thing that’s so lovely, and it’s so proximate, you don’t get these buildings set in splendid isolation. It’s all amongst the populace. A lot of those Italian cities are very hugger-mugger. You don’t get any distance from anything.

PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 107

theatres just below and all the light emerging from the street. I could also hear a tremendous amount of activity going on in the street: the buzz of the traffic, the horns of the fire engines and police cars.

So you find it easy to recapture that original thrill?

Yes, I think so.

It hasn’t changed much.

117

The funny thing is that, when you see the buildings in architectural studies, they’re drawn as elevations, and you think, that’s a fantastic palace; but when you walk past you don’t see it, because no one could physically get away from it to get that elevation because it’s in a tight little street.

That’s very interesting, that difference between seeing architectural elevations and plans as against actually experiencing a building in a city.

New York DW: So Rome was new to you, but New York, which we also represent, is one of your favourite cities, and you’ve been there many times. Tell me about the development of your response to and drawings of New York. When did you first go there?

PC: I went to New York with my family, as a child of 12 or 13, because Dad had some work in the city. But we were only on a short visit. The first main trip was with Blueprint.

I went in the 80s with Simon Esterson, the Art Director of Blueprint, and the photographer, Phil Sayer, to do a feature.

I think we had about five days, but not very long. We stayed in the Century Paramount, a tiny hotel close to Times Square. The view from my window was of the back end of 42nd Street, and the scale of the buildings, the immensity of it, was breathtaking. Nothing really prepares you for the excitement or the energy, and I still find it a thrilling place.

The energy seems to come from the heat of the subway, the air conditioning, and it affects you. When you are there you feel infused by that energy. I looked out of the window of this rather grizzly hotel room, and could see the brooding roofs, with the water towers and detritus, the tops of the

No it hasn’t. It’s still very present. It is not an easy place to work in because the pavements are always busy and you’re always in someone’s way. One example would be the Flatiron Building, which I’ve drawn quite a lot of times. The first time, I was working on a traffic island; people would come on to the island and they’d all look at what I was doing, and then the lights would change, and another lot would come on – a constant change of people. And the last time I drew it – the drawing that provided the basis for that big painting in this exhibition – I drew this guy on the bicycle, because I like having a figure in the foreground of an image [160]. He seemed as if he wasn’t going to hang around, so I thought I’d better draw him quickly, but he stopped and looked at what I was doing, and said, ‘I’ll stay here for a bit for you to draw me’. So he gave me a bit more time. Quite strange things happen like that. People being very patient with you when you are drawing without you really knowing that they clock the fact that you are drawing.

That’s pleasantly surprising in such a frenetic city. The inhabitants of New York sometimes have a reputation for being quite aggressive.

160

108 | PAUL COX JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART

They can be brittle. When I was drawing for Blueprint, I was told that if I went down to the meatpacking district in the morning, I could see all the meat lorries coming in, and it was quite an awesome sight. However, you’re in everyone’s way. These big trucks come in; the workers open the backs and the carcasses come swinging out of this thing, huge beasts on hooks going down on an aerial conveyor belt that connects up with the plant, and there’s blood on the floor.

It’s a monstrous sight, and quite a rude sort of experience to see that this city needs so many thousands of carcasses daily to function. Anyway, the guys kept telling me to get out of their way, and being rather unpleasant, and I was having a bit of difficulty. However, afterwards I went to a diner for breakfast, and all these chaps were in the diner eating great heaps of meat, chips, hash browns and coffee, and they were really friendly, saying, ‘oh come and sit down’ and ‘how did you get on’. It was completely different, and a very New York sort of thing.

Yes, it’s kind of brusque. It’s a sort of brusque persona, but actually there’s good-heartedness underneath.

Yes, I like that. I think that was a very formative experience doing that work for Blueprint, because that was my first taste of the city. I was instructed to go to a number of salient places they were going to feature, and that instruction left a real appetite for drawing, which is still there.

Well, you love New York, and the Americans seem to have taken you to their hearts.

I’m not sure they have. A lot of American clients think I’m an American illustrator! When I started working in America, I was told, ‘your work’s really English, and I don’t think there is a market for it over there’. But now I speak to American people who say, ‘we like what you do because it belongs to our tradition’, and they see me as being in the New Yorker school of illustration. This is because I have an American rep, and until recently most of the artists were American on his books.

Do you look at American illustrators? For instance, you mentioned Saul Steinberg.

I have great respect and admiration for Steinberg’s work, but he’s not so much of an influence. I hugely admire a lot of artists who have interpreted the States, not all of whom are American, like Sempé for example. Sempé is very intriguing in his interpretation of a city, New York particularly. The comic element in his drawings is in the relationship between the immense scale of the city and the small human figure.

He got that superbly. When he draws such streets as

Fifth Avenue, and serried ranks of skyscrapers, he can do so with exquisite economy and understanding and sensitivity, and the figures, which are also done in huge amount of sensitivity. With all the information that he’s got into the drawing, it’s just like you’re there. The trick, which I find very hard to pull off, is not to pack too much into the image, which then becomes too indigestible to read. It’s a great discipline, and Sempé is extraordinary, I think.

I do go to the Society of Illustrators in a lovely townhouse in New York. A lot of the friends I have are members. Every year they have a party and an exhibition. It’s very convivial actually. In the bar, where the drinks are free in the evening, there are a lot of members who spend all night or very late there. I can remember meeting all sorts of strange people there. It is great fun.

So I’ve enjoyed the American thing, and especially doing the work for Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair. I did his dinner menu for the Monkey Bar, which is one of his restaurants, but which I’ve yet to go to. He’s been a great client, working for various things like Spy and the New York Observer, which I used to work for a lot, and Vanity Fair. And it’s nice to have had his patronage all along.

So when did you first come into his orbit?

On Spy magazine … It would have been in the 80s when he was doing that. I don’t think I met him ’til he was the editor of the New York Observer. I was over there and he took another illustrator, Barry Blitt, and me out for lunch. It’s another, very grand world, the Condé Nast tower, and he’s got this huge kind of corner office. When I go in there, he says, ‘let me see what you’ve got’ and I show him my drawings.

Funnily enough, Graydon is a great client of the Savile Row tailor, Anderson & Sheppard, and agreed to publish this book that they did, and I illustrated. In return, they wanted to give him a present. Ander rang me and said, ‘we’d really like to give him one of your pictures’, and I said, ‘well that’s ok. I’ll do a picture’. So I did picture of Graydon in Anderson & Sheppard’s, being measured up … I got all the significant chaps in the interior in the drawing, with Ander going along with the champagne. He was like the king. He was very touched, when they gave it, which was good.

I don’t go over to New York more than once every other year, so it’s not that frequent. However, I’ve made good friends and feel that I’ve had a long relationship with the place. It’s like London in a way, because it’s become so close to my heart.

PAUL COX: JOURNEYS THROUGH HIS ART | 109

CHRIS BEETLES GALLERY 8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s London SW1Y 6QB 020 7839 7551 gallery@chrisbeetles.com

www.chrisbeetles.com