John Kingsley Cook

Last updated

John Kingsley Cook
Born1911 (1911)
Died1994 (aged 8283)
NationalityBritish
Education
Known forPainting

John Kingsley Cook (1911-1994) was an English artist, teacher and wood engraver.

Contents

Biography

Cook was born in Winchcombe in Gloucestershire and studied art at the Royal Academy Schools, where he was taught by both Walter Thomas Monnington and Walter Westley Russell. [1] At the RA, Cook won a gold medal and a travelling scholarship. [2] He went on to study at the Central School of Art and Crafts where he specialised in wood engraving, under the direction of Noel Rooke. [1] In 1939, for the book publisher Harrap, he illustrated The Teamsmen by Crichton Porteous. [2]

During World War II, Cook served as a wireless operator in the Merchant Navy. Cook was shipwrecked in October 1941 and spent several days in an open boat in the Mediterranean when his ship, the Empire Guillemot , en route from Malta, was attacked and sunk. [3] Cook was then held captive in prisoner-of-war camps in Algeria for a year until the Allied landings in North Africa liberated the camps. [4] Both while at sea and in the camps, Cook continued to sketch and, when possible, paint. In due course, the War Artists' Advisory Committee acquired some nine examples of these works and they are now held in the Imperial War Museum in London. [5] After a period of recuperation, Cook rejoined the Merchant Navy and served on refuelling tankers in the Mediterranean until the war ended. [3]

When his war service ended in 1945, Cook settled in Edinburgh and taught graphic design and engraving at the Edinburgh College of Art, where he also lectured on the history of art.

In 1958 he created the mosaic wall at the Lady Altar in the newly built St Teresa's Church in Dumfries. Working in situ and with three assistants, it was completed in three weeks. [6]

In 1960 he was appointed Head of Design at the College, a post he held until his retirement in 1971. [3] [7] In Edinburgh, Cook had a number of solo exhibitions at both the Demarco Gallery and at Open Eye Gallery but also showed in London including at the Gallery Upstairs at the Royal Academy. [1] Cook toured a show of images called Microcosm and also produced a volume of poems and wood engravings entitled Aftermath, based on drawings made in Bristol and London after war-time air raids on those cities. [2] Cook added a postscript, entitled The Greening to the volume in 1984. [2] Later in life, Cook turned to a more abstract style of painting and also created large works on ecological themes. [1]

A memorial show to Cook was held in 1995 at the Edinburgh College of Art and a retrospective exhibition was held at the Open Eye Gallery in 1999. [1] Cook's wartime sketches were included in the War Artists At Sea exhibition mounted at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in 2014. [4] A number of retrospective drawings Cook made, in the 1960s, of his wartime experiences are also held at Greenwich. [3]

Related Research Articles

Leon Underwood British artist

George Claude Leon Underwood was a British artist, although primarily known as a sculptor, printmaker and painter, he was also an influential teacher and promotor of African art. His travels in Mexico and West Africa had a substantial influence on his art, particularly on the representation of the human figure in his sculptures and paintings. Underwood is best known for his sculptures cast in bronze, carvings in marble, stone and wood and his drawings. His lifetime's work includes a wide range of media and activities, with an expressive and technical mastery. Underwood did not hold modernism and abstraction in art in high regard and this led to critics often ignoring his work until the 1960s when he came to be viewed as an important figure in the development of modern sculpture in Britain.

Eric Ravilious

Eric William Ravilious was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs and other English landscapes, which examine English landscape and vernacular art with an off-kilter, modernist sensibility and clarity. He served as a war artist, and died when the aircraft he was in was lost off Iceland.

Lucy Kemp-Welch British painter

Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch was a British painter and teacher who specialised in painting working horses. She is best known for the paintings of horses in military service she produced during World War One and for her illustrations to the 1915 edition of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty.

Leonard Rosoman British painter

Leonard Rosoman was a British artist.

Helen Francesca Mary Binyon was a British artist and author. She was also a watercolour painter, an illustrator and a puppeteer.

Rosemary "Ray" Howard-Jones was a prolific Welsh painter best known for her impressionistic seascapes and paintings of the coastline of Wales, particularly of the areas around Skomer and Marloes.

Stephen Bone was an English painter, writer, broadcaster and noted war artist. Bone achieved early success in book illustration using woodcuts before he turned to painting and art criticism.

Claude Maurice Rogers was a British painter of portraits and landscapes, an influential art teacher, a founding member of the Euston Road School and at one time the President of the London Group of British artists.

John Finnie (painter)

John Finnie was a Scottish landscape painter and engraver. He was best known in London for his original mezzotint engravings of landscape, and exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers, and Engravers. When he moved to Towyn in northern Wales he painted numerous landscape paintings of places in the Capel Curig area, such as Snowdon. He was headmaster of the Liverpool Mechanics Institute and School of Art from 1855 until 1896. Several paintings related to him are on display in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool and the Portsmouth Museum.

Victorine Anne Foot was a British artist who worked in oils, watercolours and pastels. Foot is best known for her work during World War II on military camouflage and for her post-war career as an artist and teacher in Scotland.

Sydney Carline British artist

Sydney William Carline was a British artist and teacher known for his depictions of aerial combat painted during World War One.

Archibald Standish Hartrick Scottish painter and lithographer

Archibald Standish Hartrick was a Scottish painter known for the quality of his lithographic work. His works covered urban scenes, landscapes and figure painting and he was a founder member of the Senefelder Club.

James Cowie was a Scottish painter and teacher. The quality of his portrait paintings and his strong linear style made him among the most individual Scottish painters of the 1920s and 1930s. His work displayed meticulous draughtsmanship which was based on his studies of the Old Masters and his use of many preparatory drawings.

Edmond Xavier Kapp was a British portrait painter, draughtsman and caricaturist who during his career depicted many of the most famous politicians, artists and musicians of the time.

Charles Alfred Mozley was a British artist who was also a teacher. He was a prolific book illustrator and designer of book covers, posters and prints.

Thomas James Carr was an Irish artist who was associated with the Euston Road School in the 1930s and had a long career as a painter of domestic scenes and landscapes.

Edgar Ainsworth (1905-1975) was a British artist, poster designer and magazine illustrator, who is known for the drawings he made at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the months following the camps' liberation by the British Army in 1945.

Eric Wilfred Taylor was a British artist and teacher. Although he had a long career encompassing painting, printmaking and the production of sculptures, murals, and ceramics, he is now perhaps best known for the works he created during the Second World War and in particular the paintings he produced when he was among the British troops that liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Joy Claire Allison Dalby is a British artist and book illustrator who mainly depicts botanical subjects and who works in watercolours, gouache and wood engraving.

Elizabeth Gulland was a Scottish-born engraver and painter.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 David Buckman (1998). Artists in Britain Since 1945 Vol 1, A to L. Art Dictionaries Ltd. ISBN   0 95326 095 X.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Alan Horne (1994). The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN   1 85149 1082.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Royal Museums Greenwich. "Cook, John Kingsley". Royal Museums Greenwich. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  4. 1 2 Rebbeca Onion (2 April 2014). "One Sailor's Sketched Memories of a World War II Shipwreck". Slate. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  5. Imperial War Museum. "Correspondence with artists:John Kingsley Cook". Imperial War Museum . Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  6. "Church Architecture". St Teresa's Parish Community Website. 2019. Retrieved 22 January 2019.
  7. Peter J.M. McEwan (1994). The Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN   1 85149 134 1.