ART & ARTISTS: Edward William Cooke

Wednesday 8 June 2022

Edward William Cooke - part 11

Edward William Cooke (1811–1880) was an English landscape and marine painter. He was born in London, the son of well-known line engraver George Cooke; his uncle, William Bernard Cooke (1778–1855), was also a line engraver of note, and Edward was raised in the company of artists. He was a precocious draughtsman and a skilled engraver from an early age, displayed an equal preference for marine subjects and published his "Shipping and Craft" when he was 18, in 1829. Cooke began painting in oils in 1833 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution in 1835.

He went on to travel and paint with great industry at home and abroad, indulging his love of the 17th-century Dutch marine artists with a visit to the Netherlands in 1837. He returned regularly over the next 23 years, studying the effects of the coastal landscape and light, as well as the works of the country’s Old Masters, resulting in highly successful paintings. He went on to travel in Scandinavia, Spain, North Africa and, above all, to Venice. In 1858, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.

He also had serious natural history and geological interests, being a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Geological Society and Fellow of the Zoological Society, and of the Society of Antiquaries. In the 1840s he helped his friend, the horticulturist James Bateman to fit out and design the gardens at Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire, in particular the orchids and rhododendrons. His geological interests in particular led to his election as Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863 and he became a Royal Academician the following year. In 1842 John Edward Gray named a species of boa, Corals cookii, in Cooke's honour.

This is part 11 of 11 on the works of Edward William Cooke.

Note: Details were not found for the remainder of these images: