Summary
From around 1844 Cox based much of his subject-matter on the area around Bettws-y-Coed, in the mountains of Caernarvonshire, North Wales. He had started making annual sketching visits to the area at this time, staying first at the Royal Oak inn in the village and later at a farmhouse nearby. Cox became very attached to ‘dear old Bettws’ and its inhabitants, and encouraged other artists to come and paint there, as his friend and biographer William Hall recalls:
For a long succession of summers the famous artist might have been seen – with ruddy complexion, a figure by no means slight, and ‘clad in a suit of sober grey’ lounging before the ‘Royal Oak’, smoking a cigar, or issuing from its then humble portal, sketch-book in hand, after an early breakfast, to jot down with rapid strokes the leading features of some lovely ‘bit’ near at hand, or to trace the lines of some more extensive subject, more distant, in the Lledr valley, or by the side of the beautiful Conway river… (read more)
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