# Book of Pictures

- By: Kenyon Cox (born Warren, OH 1856-died New York City 1919)
- Date: 1910-1917
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 29 7/8 x 36 in. (76.0 x 91.5 cm)
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Allyn Cox
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=5847)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/0df7578c61af0c8fca7c64182d4669b8.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Kenyon Cox was as much an art critic as a painter. He contributed articles to prestigious magazines such as The Nation and Scribner’s, and much of his writing dealt with the power of art to speak a universal language. His Raphael-inspired Book of Pictures, of a mother showing her child an illustrated book, represents this conviction. In the early years of the twentieth century, many Americans learned about European art through mass-produced images in books and magazines. Cox advocated using such means to encourage lessons of good taste that would extend into all aspects of American life. (Morgan, Kenyon Cox, 1856-1919: A Life in American Art, 1994)