Cox - Welsh funeral, w/c, fr.

The Welsh Funeral is one of David Cox's best-known narrative subjects. He made a number of watercolours and oils, all based on his experience of the funeral of a young girl at Bettws-y-Coed. In 1848 Cox exhibited an oil version at the Liverpool Academy (now Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery). In 1850 he showed a watercolour even larger than this version (30 x 39 inches), a picture that is now lost.

The child who had died was apparently a relative of the landlord of the Royal Oak at Bettws, the inn where Cox generally stayed on his annual visits to North Wales. Although each version of the subject differs in detail (and not all include the foreground tree), certain elements are keys to the narrative as explained by Cox's biographer N. Neal Solly (Memoir of the Life of David Cox, 1873, pp. 251-52). The scene is set in the early evening, apparently the customary time for funerals in North Wales at this date. At the centre of the avenue of trees the belfry of old Bettws-y-Coed church can just be seen still sunlit, its tolling bell beckoning villagers to the service. On the right of the crowd a child leans over the wall to drop flowers into the upheld apron of a little girl.  As Solly pointed out, these are not just mixed wild flowers, but poppies, symbols of death.

Although the overwhelming mood of the picture is one of sadness, this is relieved to a degree by the playful action of the children and the warm evening light. In addition, the towering trees seem to throw a protective canopy over the mass of figures, cocooning them within the landscape and underlining the fact that the whole village has turned out to support the bereaved parents. Cox's use of coarse paper and a rugged watercolour technique seems especially well-suited to the harsh realities of his subject.