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Tribute to Beryl Cook

 

Bristol's City Museum & Art Gallery's staff have paid tribute to British artist Beryl Cook who died yesterday, Wednesday 28 May, aged 81.

The museum and art gallery is one of the few provincial galleries to permanently display her work. There are two pictures, both depict Bristol scenes and one even features a yellow ferryboat that rides around the harbour.

"I was very sad to hear of the death of Beryl Cook," says Sheena Stoddard, Fine Art Curator at Bristol's City Museum & Art Gallery. "She lived in Bristol from 1998 to 2002 and I met her a few times then. Although she loved the vibrancy of Bristol our hills became too much for her and she moved back to Plymouth."

Cook was best known for her bright, comical representations of bustling large ladies and rotund jolly men all set in everyday scenes. The people of Bristol were no exception to providing inspiration for her larger than life characters.

"We have had two of her Bristol paintings on show at Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery for the past five years and they are very popular with our visitors," continues Sheena. "One is of a ferry in the docks, the other of the Old Duke pub, where she used to love to listen to the jazz and people-watch.

"People were her passion and I think she is much underrated as an observer of modern life. The people in her paintings are the ones we see everyday: shopping in the malls; using the buses or just out on the town. They are always enjoying themselves, sometimes outrageously.

"Her attitude to her own work was refreshingly modest and she was pleased to see her work hanging here alongside some of the great names of 20th-century British Art. She was fully aware of the disdain some people in the art world had for her work and found it hilarious. Success wasn't important to her, she simply wanted to paint ordinary people enjoying life. I think that is how she will be remembered."

Cook's work is a clear winner with visitors to Bristol's City Museum & Art Gallery, with the museum shop always selling out of her postcards.

 

Author: Helen Hewitt, tel. 0117 922 2646

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