Antiques expert Mike Hicks profiles Wells artist Jack Cox

This has been so, certainly way back to the late 18th and early 19th century. 

We had the Norwich School of Artists with people like Chrome, Stannard, Cotman and the like, who recorded in their own way the Norfolk and the Norwich landscapes.

The way they recorded it is quite different to the way they recorded it in the 20th century. 

Maybe the landscape was very different then, but what we have today, and certainly for the last hundred years, is a more colourful, not necessarily romantic, but a more possibly accurate way of describing life.

There are many notable exponents of this art, particularly with oil paintings.  There have been numerous groups and associations who have come and gone over the years. 

There have also been individual artists who have not necessarily been part of a group, but have worked quite spontaneously on their own, and today, I would like to talk about one of those artists, a great favorite of mine, and many others as well, I am pleased to say, and that was Jack Cox from Wells.

Jack was born in 1914, which must have been a very, very harsh time to be born into a fishing family up on the North Norfolk coast. 

I am sure there would have been not many frills and fancies in those days, not many modern things around, and a hard life for which to earn a living to sustain a family.

As a young boy, Jack worked with his father as a whelk fisherman, and also became interested in wild fowl and wild fowling. 

These must have had a direct influence of his thoughts when he eventually turned to painting. 

We know from the records that he was not always happy with the work he produced, and at one time, he was known to throw a large quantity of water colours into the sea in disgust. 

So, there was a fairly high standard being set by Jack from the start.

He was an entirely self-taught artist, and in his early years of wild fowling with his father when looking at the creeks and the marshes around Wells, must have been implanted in his mind, and we are so fortunate that he had the ability to be able to remember this and have the skill to put this down onto paper and canvas.

With Jack, he painted what he saw; no frills and fancies, no impressionist desires, but the way that he did it, enabled us to get a very clear picture, almost photographic of what things looked like; much of his work produced long before we had colour photography. 

Many of the scenes recorded by Jack have long since gone, or been altered by the tide and the winds and the disasters that struck our coast over the years, but the great thing is, his pictures are true in every sense of the word; they are not contrived, that are not made to be romantic, there to be, as they are, and therefore, from a historical point of view, and for many of us who remember Wells decades ago, how good it is to see it recorded as it was, as we would like it to be today, but of course, everything has to get modernised.

I well remember calling on many occasions to see Jack at his small studio on the allotment in Wells, picking up pictures to go into an exhibition that was being held by my local Round Table in North Walsham. 

I can also remember that every picture I picked up to go in the exhibition, sold; no question.  His honesty in the portrayal of the scenes that we all love were always the first go to, but this success didn’t affect him.

He lived a full life, fishing until the age of 63, even though he was painting at the same time, and we understand from his family, that he was painting even the day before his death at the age of 93 in 2007.

I can’t think of any North Norfolk artist that can hold a candle to the honesty of Jack’s pictures. 

Whenever I look at a work he produced that depicts Wells Harbour towards the whelk sheds, you can almost smell the sea and also the aroma from the whelks cooking when things were being boiled. 

He was a colourful character, but also much of a family man with his three children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. 

I hope that all of them have an example of Jack’s work and they appreciate it and treasure him as much as the collecting public.

STALHAM ANTIQUE GALLERY

29 High Street

Stalham

Norfolk NR12 9AH

Gallery: 01692 580636

Website: www.mikehicksantiques.co.uk