About this artwork

Some twenty miles north-east of Dundee, Auchmithie was known to Victorian readers as the fishing village described by Sir Walter Scott in his novel, The Antiquary. Cox's photographs of the place expose a hard life, close to subsistence, in the vein of Hill and Adamson's Newhaven work. This image indicates Cox's concern with the visual possibilities of photographic 'distortion', seen in the movement of the boy's head. It also reflects a wider European interest amongst late nineteenth-century urban artists in remote communities and the values of naturalness and simplicity that they stood for.

Updated before 2020

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James Cox

James Cox