B. 1783-1858 - David Cox was the most famous Birmingham artist of the mid-nineteenth century, with a national reputation for his fresh, lively landscape paintings in watercolour and, later, in oil. The Museum has the largest collection of his work anywhere in the world. The child of a blacksmith, his first employment was to a manfacturer of buttons, buckles and snuffboxes, he later worked for a firm of locket and miniature painters, then as an assistant to the scenary painter of Birmingham Theatre.

In the early 19th century he went to London fulfill his ambition to be a landscape painter, first exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1805. Between 1814-1827 he was based in Hereford where he taught at a girl's school. He moved back to London in 1827, and was by this time quite well-known as a painter of landscapes. He continued to teach until his son qualified as a teacher and took over his lessons. In 1841 he moved to Harborne, Birmingham where he lived and painted until his death in 1858.