Beryl Cook OBE - The British Peoples Choice
Beryl Cook, a shy but talented artist whose work resonated so much with the British public she became an icon.
Beryl Cook, OBE was a British painter best known for her original, amusing, and instantly recognisable paintings. Often comical, her works featured people she encountered in everyday life, in pubs, shopping, by the seaside or abroad. She had no formal training and did not take up painting until her thirties. She was a shy and private person, and in her work often depicted the flamboyant and extrovert characters so different to herself.
Her paintings are accessible, fun, exuberant and thoroughly unpretentious. The delight in her work is the vicarious pleasure of seeing ordinary people singing, dancing, eating, drinking, flirting and creasing up with laughter with absolute abandon.
Beryl Cook - Tea In The Garden
Cook admired the work of the English artist Stanley Spencer, his influence evident in her compositions and bold bulky figures. Although widely popular and recognised as one of the most well-known contemporary British artists, Cook never enjoyed acceptance by the art establishment, but was however championed by the people.
She was born in Egham, Surrey, one of four sisters. Her parents separated and her mother moved the to Reading, Berkshire with her daughters. Beryl attended Kendrick School there, but left education at fourteen and worked a variety of jobs.
In 1948, she married her childhood friend John Cook, who was in the merchant navy. When he retired from the sea, they briefly ran a pub in Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk. Their son John was born in 1950, and in 1956, the family left to live in Zimbabwe. They remained in Africa for the next decade, where in 1960 Cook produced her first painting, Hangover.
The family returned to England in the mid-sixties and moved to Cornwall, where Beryl focused more on her painting, then to Plymouth in 1968, where they bought a guest house. Beryl shared her time between running the guest house and painting. Plymouth became her inspiration. She enjoyed painting the holidaymakers, the dog walkers and the sailors she saw by day, and as an admirer of extroverts — she found nocturnal Plymouth even more appealing.
In the mid-seventies, her works caught the attention of one of their guests, who put her in touch with the management of the Plymouth Arts Centre, where her first exhibition took place in November 1975. To her, the ideal evening was spent sitting in a bar with John, safely on the fringes of the action, quietly enjoying a drink and observing the vivacious night life. Shielded by her handbag, she made detailed sketches of them all on little white cards. If she could photograph the backgrounds without drawing attention to herself, she did that, too, but it was the people who interested her.
Beryl Cook - Elvira’s Cafe
Beryl Cook - Cruising
“I hope it doesn’t become too noticeable that the people get larger and the backgrounds get smaller ,” she wrote. “It was to save me the trouble of painting all those bottles, partly because I am lazy, but also because I’m very impatient to get on with painting the people.”
Once home with her preliminary sketches, she painted her joyful scenes in oils on wood.
Having guests in the house meant exposing her pictures to a wide audience, but she was so shy, would say that her son was the artist. By 1975, when the manager of the Plymouth Arts Centre persuaded her to exhibit, she had produced over 70 and was running out of room to hang them. She was amazed when the exhibition was a sell-out, with 75 paintings finding buyers at about £600 apiece, £590 more than she had charged for the few she had sold previously.
The exhibition was a great success and resulted in a cover feature in The Sunday Times. This was followed by an exhibition at the Portal Gallery in London in 1976, where Cook would continue to exhibit regularly.
Would you love to paint like Beryl? Join us for our 10 week All-Abilities course and explore wide range of mediums and artistic styles. These art classes are suitable for all abilities, including complete beginners. We explore everything from architecture to portraits, using pencils, charcoal, pastels, watercolour, gouache and acrylics.