SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
‘SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT’: THE ART OF JAMES COOK
DOROTHEE PAULI
‘
O
ne of the most tantalising problems
cultured society is ever faced with is the
necessity of “spotting possible
winners”’, wrote the pioneering art critic
James Shelley in 1933, the same year that James
Cook, one of his most promising young protégés,
set off on his second journey to Europe. 1 Not yet
thirty, Cook had risen from humble beginnings to
become one of the most prominent and successful
students to emerge from the Canterbury College
School of Art in the 1920s. Multiple awards and a
significant travelling scholarship had afforded him
opportunities to extend his studies. As a skilled
draughtsman and fine painter of both the landscape
and figure, he seemed destined to make a major
contribution to New Zealand art. But Cook never
returned home. Instead, he settled in Sydney, where
he devoted much of his time to teaching. Neither a
modernist nor a regionalist, he has been largely
overlooked by local historians of twentieth-century
art. 2 Although widely represented in public
collections in both Australia and New Zealand, his
work is seldom seen today. An exception is the Art
Collection of the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute
68
of Technology (CPIT) where two of Cook’s works
are on permanent display as reminders of the
historical origins of that collection.
The CPIT collection was formed in the early
1930s, near the time the Memorial Hall of the then
Christchurch Technical College reached completion
as a tribute to students and staff who had served in
World War One. McGregor Wright suggested that
the Hall should house a collection of contemporary
paintings. These would not only serve to adorn the
expansive walls of the structure, but would also
provide a much needed opportunity for students to
appreciate the fine arts. Wright was well qualified
to initiate such a project. A wealthy connoisseur, he
owned a sizeable collection of contemporary New
Zealand art and served on the Canterbury Society
of Arts (CSA) council from 1907 until 1938.3 As a
Fig. 1 James Cook, Avignon From the Palace
Gardens, c. 1928, watercolour, 255 x 368 mm.
Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o
Waiwhetu, presented by the Canterbury Society of
Arts, 1932.
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SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
member of the Technical College Board of
Governors for 28 years,4 he was ideally positioned
to persuade local artists to donate some of their work
to the collection, building ‘a memorial for himself’
in the process.5
Donors included Grace Butler, Margaret
Stoddart, Cora Wilding, Archibald Nicoll and
Sydney Lough Thompson, whose art formed the
core of a collection of mainly landscapes, still lifes
and some figure studies. 6 All these works were oil
paintings, watercolours or works on paper. There
were no sculptures, which reflected the preferences
and priorities of the times. A contemporary
commentator for the Technical College Review
nevertheless felt that there was a great variety of
works on display, ‘pictures to appeal to all tastes,
from the average appreciator to the modern
abstractionist’.7 They were destined, in the words
of Wright himself, ‘to deepen [our] love of nature,
for pictorial representation is but nature modified
by the artist’s personality’.8
To further his didactic aims and widen the scope
of the Memorial Collection (as it became known),
Wright even approached artists who had long since
left the province for further donations. Among these
was James Cook. An earlier oil of his, The Valley of
the Ouveze, South of France (c. 1928, fig. 2) had been
acquired by the College some years before.9 Cook,
generous by nature, donated a watercolour entitled
Lérida, Spain (c. 1935, fig. 5), joining his brother
Alfred and sister-in law Rita (née Angus) in being
one of the younger Cantabrians to contribute to the
collection. In the process, he left behind a valuable
reminder of an early career that was closely linked
with the Christchurch community.
William Edward James Cook was born on 23
November 1904 in the Heathcote Valley.10 His
father, John William Cook, had come to New
Zealand in 1891 from Lincolnshire and was initially
a successful basketmaker, before a fire and prolonged
ill-health brought ‘his business into decay’.11 Cook’s
mother, Harriet, hailed from Dunedin, and as an
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 2 James Cook, The Valley of the Ouveze, South of France, 1928, oil on canvas, 325 x 395 mm. Collection
of Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology.
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69
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
occasional writer of stories for the Christchurch
Press, she encouraged her son’s creativity ‘from
babyhood’.12 Not surprisingly, James Cook was
close to her and constantly sang her praises.13 His
portrait studies of her, such as a 1932 drawing (fig.
3) held at the Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru, attest
to their enduring relationship.
Growing up in the rural surroundings of the
Heathcote Valley, Cook showed an early interest in
sketching. One of his first teachers was an itinerant
Australian artist, Percival Prince. A one-time
employee of John William Cook, Prince regularly
supplied his pupil, not yet ten years old, with
demanding exercises. He gave him:
illustrations to copy, and required him to
illustrate for himself all kinds of incidents he had
seen from his memory of them afterwards. He
emphasised the need for exact observation and
the storing of memory with detailed images –
animals, men at work, had to be drawn from
memory.14
Every spare moment was taken up with such studies
and ‘this gave Jim the encouragement and enthusiasm
to do better.’ 15 Not surprisingly then, Cook
remained committed to drawing, both from
observation and memory, for the rest of his life and
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 3 James Cook, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother,
1932, conté, 372 x 273 mm. Collection of Aigantighe
Art Gallery, Timaru.
70
his obvious skill as a draughtsman was singled out
by critics as one of the strongest features of his artistic
achievement. In addition, both his upbringing in
less then privileged circumstances, marked by the
need to contribute to the family income from a
young age, as well as his parents’ firm beliefs in ‘good
citizenship’,16 instilled in Cook an almost puritan
work ethic.
Cook’s elementary schooling was followed in
1916 by further instruction in the arts at the
Christchurch Normal School, where W. A.
Wauchop, a respected painter of conventionally
pleasant watercolour landscapes, ‘took his boys out
sketching from nature in his own time, and supplied
material out of his own pocket’.17 In 1918 Cook
enrolled at the Canterbury College School of Art,
where he remained a student until 1925. Throughout
his time at the School, Cook held a Free Place,
exempting him from paying fees due to the financial
circumstances of his family; he worked a milk round
before and after classes for the first three years of
full-time study. This was followed by three years of
daytime employment as a designer for a firm of
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
advertisers and additional jobs as a part-time
instructor at the School of Art, as well as at the High
School and Technical College at Ashburton. 18
Despite these consistent pressures on his time, Cook
addressed his course work with obvious
commitment and from the beginning collected many
student prizes.19
Of his teachers at the School, whose staff at the
time included Frederick Gurnsey, Archibald Nicoll,
Richard Wallwork, Francis Shurrock, Cecil Kelly
and John Weeks, Cook later singled out Wallwork,
Nicoll and Shurrock as the most helpful. He
described Wallwork’s studio as a ‘haven of wakeful
rest’, while Shurrock, who joined the College in
1924, apparently taught him ‘a great deal of what he
thought he already knew’.20 But a defining moment
of his early student years was an encounter with the
work of Petrus van der Velden. According to Shelley,
Cook paid:
a personal visit to see the remainder of van der
Velden’s work, and this created in him that ecstatic
stir that points the way for the rest of life. Mr
Gerrit van der Velden allowed him to browse
through sketch books and folios on several
occasions, and the sight of so much of one man’s
work thrilled him to the soul and gave him a
feeling of the profound glory of the painter’s art.
Mr Cook is of a timid nature, and the success of
his daring tap on the magic door gave him the
necessary feeling of confidence that he might
himself one day belong to the magic circle.21
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SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 4 James Cook, Self Portrait, 1933, pencil, 336 x 222 mm. Collection of
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, gift of Francis Shurrock, 1960.
Thus a decade after his death, the Dutchman’s work
still had the power to inspire a Canterbury art
student beyond anything that local artists had to
offer and surely motivated Cook to continue his
studies abroad.
Considering his humble background, it was
therefore more than fortunate that in 1925 Cook
became the recipient of a two-year travelling art
scholarship awarded by the Society of Imperial
Culture. Rosa Sawtell, who had herself trained at
the School of Art in the 1880s, founded the Society
in 1921 22 and served as its Secretary. Having
established the scholarship, she led by example and
donated the substantial sum of £100 towards the
fund.23 Cook had already received the more modest
Rosa Sawtell Prize in December 1922 for ‘the best
study of the figure from life, produced during class
in the previous year’.24 The work that won him the
travelling scholarship three years later was another
figure study, an oil copy of Bronzino’s An Allegory:
Cupid, Venus and Folly (1540; National Gallery,
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71
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
London).25 This reflects Cook’s early interest in the
Italian masters and is all the more remarkable as he
could not have seen the original.26
Cook left for Europe in 1926, travelling first to
Edinburgh, most likely advised to do so by Nicoll,
who had studied there himself some fifteen years
earlier.27 While at the Edinburgh College of Art and
the Royal Scottish Academy, Cook was tutored by
David M. Sutherland, David Foggie, David Alison
and John Duncan. The experience was not initially
altogether positive, for Cook was:
given respectfully to understand that when he
thought he was drawing and painting, he was
merely indulging in a habit , and a bad one at
that. However, they had hope for him. He had
asked for severe criticism, and... staggered as
cheerfully as he could under it when it came.28
Cook especially valued his contact with Duncan. The
older Scotsman set his students basic composition
exercises which helped to counteract Cook’s loss of
confidence. Duncan asked him to analyse
reproductions of original paintings in terms of
movement and composition. Cook recalled choosing
images by the then highly esteemed Frank Brangwyn
and, in keeping with his admiration for the Italian
masters, a work by Giotto.29 However, such basic
exercises, though they would later influence his own
teaching methods, could not in themselves restore
Cook’s feeling for what was ‘right’ in his work.
Instead it ‘provided half-understood material for
thought and experiment’, which Cook, ever
optimistic, thought was ‘perhaps the most valuable
thing it could have done’. 30 Edinburgh was a
disappointment in other ways as well. Living there
was expensive and in order to earn and save enough
money to travel, Cook rented a room in an old,
disused and damp church. Inevitably this resulted in
bouts of ill-health which further undermined his
studies and general sense of purpose.31
A more positive outcome of his time in Edinburgh
were the friendships he struck up with fellow New
Zealander Francis McCracken and especially two
Australian art students, Arthur Murch (1902-1989)32
and d’Auvergne Boxall (1895-1943).33 Boxall later
joined Cook on painting tours in New Zealand and
exhibited alongside him at the 1931 Group show in
Christchurch.34 Undoubtedly, his friendship with
Murch and Boxall provided Cook with the necessary
contacts that facilitated and influenced the direction
of his later career in Australia. While still in Scotland,
the three young men spent the late summer cycling
in the Scottish countryside before Cook decided to
go on to Europe.
72
In his decision to leave Edinburgh for Rome,
Cook once more followed the advice of Duncan, and
spent the last term of 1926 working at the Academie
di Belle Arte and at the British School. His time in
Italy served to deepen the lifelong regard he held
for Renaissance artists, particularly Piero della
Francesca and Michelangelo. Having left Edinburgh
somewhat unsure of a way forward, Cook engaged
closely with what he believed to represent the most
fundamental and enduring aspects of Western art.
He analysed existing compositions in terms of
proportion, rhythm and colour relations and learned
how to control these elements within his own
work.35 The picturesque landscapes and village
scenes of Europe provided ample opportunity to
address these technical issues. As borne out by The
Valley of the Ouveze, South of France (fig. 2), Cook
had developed something of a preference for
panoramic vistas, placing himself high above the
village and the surrounding countryside. This
allowed him to combine the simple, geometric shapes
of roofs and houses with the softer, more organic
forms of the trees and the hills in the background.
Consistently applied contrasts of light and dark,
harmonised by an otherwise muted palette of greys
and greens, emphasise the strong diagonal of the
composition.
Cook had been profoundly influenced by the
example of tradition in European art when, in line
with the Society for Imperial Culture’s conditions,
he returned to London for further study. He
enrolled at the Chelsea and Regent Street
Polytechnics, complementing his studies with paid
employment,36 most likely mural painting. Cook
produced several studies for such work before 1933.
One of these, The Constructors (present location
unknown)37 consists of a multi-figure composition
of broadly sketched labourers at work, typical of
the virtuous, socialist-inclined subject matter seen
in public art works at the time. In addition, he
managed to fit in further trips to the continent,
especially France. Fishing Boats, Concarneau
(present location unknown)38 sees Cook retracing
the steps of other New Zealand expatriate painters,
notably Sydney Lough Thompson and Frances
Hodgkins. But time was running out, and towards
the end of 1928 Cook sent a batch of his recent
paintings back to Christchurch for inspection by his
old teachers. Nicoll’s favourable comments were
read out at the Society of Imperial Culture’s annual
meeting and, based on this, it was decided to extend
the scholarship for another year to allow Cook ‘to
further his studies in England’.39 However, financial
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SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
pressures once more impinged on his enjoyment of
art, life and friendship in Britain, and Cook finally
returned to New Zealand in April 1929.
Back in Christchurch, Cook lost no time in
reconnecting with the local art scene, and for some
weeks attracted considerable public attention. In an
interview given shortly after his return, he reassured
local readers that the Canterbury College School of
Art was as good as the Slade School in London and
the art schools of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The
latter might boast bigger names among the staff, but
‘they do not give the same individual attention, and
the student is left to his own resources’.40 Cook
thought that the recent war had ‘upset things in
England’, 41 but he believed that overall, art in
England was in advance of art in Italy and France.
It was ‘more solid and more united and … founded
on the best tradition of the older schools’.42
Cook’s attitude obviously appealed to his former
teachers, for soon after his arrival, he was appointed
part-time instructor at School of Art, teaching in the
junior life and commercial drawing classes.43 He
rejoined the Christchurch Sketch Club44 and, like
previous returning artists, showcased his European
works in a solo exhibition in June 1929.45 The show
garnered him further critical success. In an article
entitled ‘Mr James Cook’s Work – Signs of Genius
Apparent’, his Press reviewer noted that he had gone
‘for the simplest subjects. The success of the
paintings lies in the fact that he has executed them
in such clean and bold lines…. A simple subject is
the best if it is well painted.’46 An example of this
kind of work is Avignon (present location unknown)
an unfussy, strongly designed watercolour of the
Pont d’Avignon.47 Sales were good, and over the
next decade Cook’s moderately priced watercolours,
oils and drawings were regularly seen the art
societies’ shows of Auckland, Christchurch,
Dunedin and Wellington. He also submitted works
to the Group in 1931 and 1932 and showed with the
short-lived New Zealand Society of Artists in 1933
and 1934. 48 From the beginning, Cook was
primarily valued as a draughtsman who never
resorted to ‘tricks of fashion’.49 He was seen as
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 5 James Cook, Lérida, Spain, c.1935, watercolour, 326 x 400 mm. Collection of Christchurch Polytechnic
Institute of Technology.
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73
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 6 James Cook, Grey Day, Gerona, c. 1935, watercolour, 280 x 334 mm.
Collection of Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru.
hardworking and ‘fundamentally simple and
unpretentious’.50 Both his landscape and figure
studies were admired for their apparent ‘ease and
actuality’ (fig. Copyright.
4).51
Reproduction forbidden.
At times exhibiting could become a bit of a family
affair. Cook’s brother Alfred had married Rita
Angus in 1930 and all three artists contributed to
the 1932 Group exhibition, generally acknowledged
at that time to represent the ‘new school’ of
Canterbury art. James Cook, however, was not
considered to be among the most daring of the
younger Christchurch artists:
If James Cook stands closer to the traditional
manner than most of his fellow exhibitors, his
work is nevertheless outstanding for its aesthetic
perception not less than for sheer craftsmanship.
His pencil studies are characterised by a masterly
line... and a strong sense of design is apparent in
‘Sketch for Mural Decoration’…. Promising
pencil studies and etchings were shown by
Alfred H. Cook, a brother, and Rita Cook, the
third artist in the family, was represented by
several commendable drawings, which at times
were reminiscent of her husband’s line. 52
The last sentence of the joint review indicates the
kind of difficulties that the female member of the
trio could have experienced in establishing an artistic
identity of her own had she stayed married to Alfred.
But it also serves as a reminder that from a similar
74
basis, as further borne out by the works they donated
to the Technical School Memorial Collection, the
three artists went on to develop distinctly different
careers. In a climate of cultural nationalism, all three
had the potential to elevate New Zealand regionalism
to a new level of achievement and to move on from
there to make further major contributions to New
Zealand art, but only Rita Angus went on to do so.
Few of James Cook’s exhibits, even of the early
1930s, referenced local subject matter, perhaps
indicative of the fact that despite the warm welcome
home, he had remained unsettled. Moreover, in the
space of three years, professional differences had
rendered his position at the School intolerable.
According to his former student, Basil Honour,
by the early 1930s Cook’s views on contemporary
art in Britain and Europe, as well as his criticisms of
teaching methods at the College, encountered much
hostility.53 This was not perhaps surprising given
the long-running feud between the progressive,
idiosyncratic Shurrock and the more conformist
Wallwork, amongst other internal tensions. Like
Shurrock – and indeed Shelley – Cook was not part
of the conservative Christchurch establishment, and
this did not make life easy. Salvation appeared in
the shape of one of his wealthier students. Honour,
who had moved to Christchurch in 1929, met Cook
in 1930, when he first attended drawing classes at
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SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 7 James Cook, Windy Day, Gerona, c. 1935, watercolour, 280 x 334 mm.
Collection of Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru.
the School. He also received lessons in painting from
Nicoll and Cecil Kelly but, according to Honour,
‘it was James Cook who exerted the greatest
impression on the students at the time’.54 Cook
shared many of his professional concerns with his
new friend and also told him of his ‘desperate desire
to return to London’.55 Seeing him so miserable,
Honour generously arranged for funds to cover
Cook’s journey back to Europe and even included a
small living allowance to help him get back on his
feet on arrival.56
Cook was able to leave Christchurch in early
1933, travelling first to Melbourne, where he
intended to meet up with Murch and Boxall and
where, over several weeks, he carried out a number
of portrait commissions. He arrived in London in
May, and stayed there for some six weeks, visiting
local galleries and renewing old friendships. But
rather than settling into a routine, he spent July and
August in Ghent, painting landscape and figure
studies and by September had moved on to Spain.57
Here Cook spent most of his time in Catalonia,
visiting Lérida, Gerona and the picturesque Tossa
de Mar on the Costa Brava. His visit to Gerona was
to be of special significance, for it was there in 1935
that he met and married Ruth Howell, an Australian
citizen.58
These were challenging times for Spain, with the
fledgling Spanish Republic being plagued by
widespread civil unrest and sporadic outbreaks of
violence, culminating in the Spanish Civil War of
1936-39. However, none of the difficulties of daily
life during times of social upheaval obviously surface
in his known work of that period.59 Instead, Cook
concentrated on landscape and architectural studies.
Lérida, Spain, a medium-sized watercolour which
he donated to the Technical College Memorial
Collection (fig. 5), probably dates from this period.
Here Cook has again adopted an elevated viewpoint,
taking in a panoramic view over the roofscape of
the city and recording in the bleached tones of the
midday sun the sweep of the town to the fields and
river flat in the far distance. The image highlights
once more the hallmarks of Cook’s work, especially
his draughtsmanship and complete control over the
watercolour process, which resulted in scenes of
accentuated clarity.
On other occasions, he uses the same medium to
capture the effects of changing atmospheric
conditions on the same subject, seen in Grey Day,
Gerona (fig. 6) and Windy Day, Gerona (c. 1935,
fig. 7), both in the Aigantighe Art Gallery. The latter
depicts Gerona in winter sunlight, while in the
former a monochrome palette of blended browns
and greys, applied loosely and wet on wet, creates a
much more sombre mood. Both images serve as
further reminders that in most of his Catalonian
scenes, Cook assumed the role of the observer,
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75
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
somewhat distant from everyday life. At times, his
obvious concern with matters of composition, colour
definition and the effects of light rendered his
numerous architectural studies of the area somewhat
lifeless and remote, not unlike a picture postcard.
This aspect of his work was not lost on his audiences
at home, as he continued to supply art society shows
with batches of his recent European work until 1938.
Commenting on the New Zealand Academy of Fine
Arts exhibition in Wellington in 1934, Roland
Hipkins described Cook as an:
artist, who, for the time being, is exercising his
undoubted talent and sureness of
draughtsmanship in telling us something of the
topographical features of Spain. His small
water-colours and carefully painted oil studies
show a patient and earnest endeavour to
assimilate material facts, which he presents with
some distinction. It is said ‘that had Ingres been
a greater artist, his painting might have been less
perfect, or had his paintings been less perfect,
he might have been a greater artist’.60
Perfection in technique was not what Hipkins was
looking for. In the spirit of the times, he encouraged
his fellow artists to move beyond ‘unimaginative
transcripts of nature’61 and to connect with the idea
of community and national character. Cook had
little to contribute to the search for a national style
and neither did his work communicate much about
the feel of life in Spain. Critical disappointment with
the direction of his work influenced hitherto faithful
supporters in Christchurch.
In his home province, Cook was at that time still
regarded as ‘one of the most interesting painters this
country has produced,’62 but a series of landscapes
and architectural studies exhibited at the CSA in 1935
somewhat displeased the reviewer (probably his
long-time supporter Shelley). Characterised once
more by ‘fastidious precision’, his studies of Gerona
were considered lacking in excitement and
eloquence. 63 Two years later, his outstanding
draughtsmanship could no longer distract his
Christchurch audience that ‘his architectural studies
of terraced roofs [had] become monotonous’.64 In
the eyes of his New Zealand critics, then, Cook
risked losing his way. His second sojourn in Europe
had not produced a marked stylistic development
or a more imaginative treatment of subject matter.
Matters were not helped by the fact that for much
of his time, he chose to live and work well away from
centres of the European art scene. In Spain, Cook
could not have received much critical input into his
work. Any available advice would probably have
come from fellow travellers (such as the Australian
76
Norman Lloyd),65 who also tried to find themselves
artistically while exploring the cultural landscapes
of Europe. The advice of the more experienced
expatriate Frances Hodgkins should have been
welcome. Although no firm records of their meeting
exist, there is some evidence to suggest that Cook
did meet the older artist at Tossa de Mar and that
she was greatly impressed by his youth and
enthusiasm for her work.66
Cook prudently left Spain in 1936, having decided
to revisit familiar places in the south of France and
the Rhone valley. Not for him a longer stay in Paris,
where he could have familiarised himself with
modernist takes on landscape and figure painting.
Instead, his work of the late 1930s, exemplified in
Les Angles, South of France (1938; Museum of New
Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington),67 traverses
familiar ground. A patchwork of village roofs, with
a narrow street in the foreground, leads the eye into
a cluster of houses in the middle distance and
background. Signs of life are kept to a minimum,
resulting once more in ‘a composition of exquisite
order, clarity and colour’.68
Besides such technically accomplished
watercolour studies and drawings, Cook also
continued to submit smaller oil paintings to his New
Zealand exhibitions. A Valley in Catalonia (c. 1934;
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki)69 captures in
tight, bundled brushstrokes the subtle patchwork of
greens and browns of this rural vista. His moderately
post-impressionist approach to the subject lacks the
expressionistic vigour and luminosity of comparable
landscapes by Rhona Haszard, but demonstrates a
similar sense of design and restriction of detail. Cook
strikes a very different and more experimental note
with Winter, Spain (c. 1934; Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki), a gloomy, vaguely surrealist
townscape which moves his work closer to that of
his British contemporaries. Although finer, linear
elements, such as the detailing of a few bare trees,
lessen the overall impact of the broad, unfussy
brushwork, the image nevertheless suggests that
Cook had begun to explore in his oil paintings an
alternative path to the diagrammatic clarity of his
watercolours. A change in subject-matter did not
occur until forced upon him by external
circumstances.
Cook was back in London when war broke out.
There he had worked as an assistant to Eric
Kennington70 and he also met Bernard Meninsky.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Kennington made a
considerable name for himself as a sculptor, whose
achievements were then ranked alongside those of
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SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Frank Dobson.71
Kennington’s cautious engagement with modernist
practices would have presented Cook with few
problems. Like Cook, Kennington never lost sight
of tradition and in his paintings combined strong
draughtsmanship with dramatic composition and
fluent brushwork. Following the outbreak of
hostilities, Kennington, alongside his contemporary
Henry Lamb, was once more appointed an official
war artist. Cook also received war-related
commissions, and while working for the British
Ministry of Information (1939-1941) made greater
use of figure-based work. During the early years of
the conflict, Cook also spent some of his time with
the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.72 While
stationed with his countrymen, he produced several
informal pencil studies of army life, such as Sgt A.
C. Hulme, V.C., 2nd N.Z.E.F. at Mychett Camp,
England (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide),
where the soldier sits patiently for the artist outside
his tent. Cook also tried his hand at more ambitious
and emotionally charged studies in oil, such as
Bomber’s Moon (1941; Christchurch Art Gallery Te
Puna o Waiwhetu, fig. 8), where three stretcherbearers carry off a victim of a night-time raid. The
brushwork is unusually vigorous and the strong
diagonal composition strives for the dramatic effect
that Kennington achieved in images of similar
subjects some 25 years earlier. Otherwise Cook
appears to have reserved his livelier figure
compositions for his sketchbooks.73
Cook left Britain in 1941, intending to return to
New Zealand. Instead, he joined the Australian Civil
Construction Corps, where he was mainly engaged
on camouflage, and subsequently, like his old friend
Arthur Murch, became an official war artist with the
Australian Forces. In 1943, he was sent to New
Guinea, where he remained until the end of the war.74
Earlier in the conflict, an editorial of Art in
Australia described Australian artists as reluctant
contributors to the war effort and they were urged
to step up to the mark, not only to record Australia’s
participation in the historical event, but also to lift
public morale. The British, Americans, Canadians
and even the New Zealanders were seen to be much
more proactive in this regard,75 so Cook’s efforts on
behalf of the Australian forces would have been
welcome. He had come to the attention of the
authorities in 1942 with one of his rare solo
exhibitions.
Held at the Notanda Galleries in Sydney and
opened by Sydney Ure Smith on 25 May 1942, the
exhibition included earlier European war work, as
well as other watercolours, oils and drawings
produced during pre-war travel on the Continent.
The catalogue introduced him as a New Zealand
artist who in less than a year had made something of
a name for himself in Australia. Works of his had
been acquired for several national collections and
earlier in 1942, he had received the George Mackay
Commemoration prize at Bendigo. The review of
the exhibition published in the Sydney Morning
Herald was more equivocal, commending yet
condemning Cook for the same reasons:
An exceptionally capable draughtsman and
technician, he is a reporter rather than a creator.
Nevertheless, his observations are set down with
conviction, feeling and character generally
absent from the canvases of our followers of
realism. The Commonwealth authorities could
make a wise move by granting him one of the
much overdue official war artists’ appointments.
There are others to whom first hand contact with
the war would no doubt prove stimulative of
much more sensitive and original work, but
there is room and need within our fighting forces
for a painter like Cook also.76
During his time with the Australian forces, Cook
performed predictably. Rather than trying his hand
at creating emotionally charged, imaginative scenes
of combat, he remained a reporter of everyday army
life. A good example of his approach is Australian
Trucks (c. 1943; Imperial War Museum, London).77
Broadly sketched in fluid brushwork, the picture has
the feel of a night-time snapshot, taken from the back
seat of an Australian military vehicle as its headlights
illuminate the troop carriers in front. The movement
of the truck is palpable, but the driver remains
anonymous, his features disguised by his broadrimmed hat. As in Laura Knight’s Take-Off
(Imperial War Museum, London), the viewer is
placed directly among the combatants, but no eyecontact is made between artist and soldier or viewer
and sitter, thus draining the work of any heightened
emotional charge.
Cook employs a similar approach in Removing
the Sick and Wounded from Lae (1944; present
location unknown), where he observes from above
a group of Australian soldiers tending to and
evacuating their casualties. This multi-figure
composition is organised around a grid of strong
diagonals, allowing Cook to impose order on a
chaotic scene. He moved further into stylisation in
Patrol Resting (1945; Australian War Memorial
Collection, Canberra). Calm but alert, a group of
Australian soldiers is seen at rest amidst a jungle
setting. As in the earlier work of Cook’s associate
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77
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
Meninsky, there is none of the grime or disturbing
detail of war. The figures are schematised to blend
with their environment in what amounts to a mural
of understated heroism somewhat reminiscent of
Kennington’s restrained memorial sculptures.78
Cook donated a wide selection of his war pictures,
both figure and landscapes studies, to the Australian
Comforts Fund, which had organised an exhibition
of his work at the Farmer’s Blaxland Galleries in
Sydney in September 1945. On this occasion, his
work was put up for tender alongside a mixed batch
of images produced by his American counterparts and
again, his exhibits drew a lukewarm critical response:
The war paintings of James Cook are to all intent
straightforward records of the New Guinea
scene. Where nature has decided to remain its
own unruffled self despite the ravages of war,
the artist has certainly not allowed imagination
to vivify that scene. ...What is really missing is
the human element. James Cook has a
remarkably well adjudged tonal sense which
allows him to add innumerable details without
diverting much attention from his paintings as
a whole, but he has allowed this technical servant
to become the master.79
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
The war affected Cook in several ways. His work,
although considered highly skilled and aethestically
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 8 James Cook, Bomber’s Moon, 1941, oil on wood panel, 462 x 387 mm. Collection of
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.
78
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SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
pleasing, had been found wanting when historical
circumstance demanded heightened expressive
content. His service with the Australian forces also
disrupted his plans to return to New Zealand and
once hostilities ended, he elected to stay in Australia.
This was not altogether surprising. After all, Cook
was married to an Australian and his brother Alfred
had crossed the Tasman in 1940 to take up a teaching
post at the East Sydney Technical College.80 In
addition, his most significant artistic contacts were
now Australians, most notably William Dobell,
whom Cook had first met in the 1930s in London.
On his return from New Guinea, Cook therefore
took up a position as art teacher at the East Sydney
Technical College, perhaps on the recommendation
of Dobell. There his students were mostly returned
servicemen, such as Tom Thomson, Roy Fluke and
John Coburn. In addition, he served as adviser to
the Art Gallery of New South Wales and for some
time acted as a buyer for the National Gallery of
Victoria.81 He further extended his professional
network by becoming a member of the Australian
Society of Artists, the Australian Water Colour
Institute and the Contemporary Art Society.82 In
March 1950, he was appointed curator at the Art
Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, probably the
first such position in Australia to be held by a New
Zealander. But this association did not last long. By
June 1952, he had resigned from his new position as
the gallery director to devote more time to his own
work and to do ‘the job he so dearly loved –
teaching’.83
To that end, he rejoined the East Sydney Technical
School as a part-time tutor, where his students
included Jocelyn Maughan, Margaret Woodward
and Robin Crofts. The pastoral care Cook extended
to his students was exemplary (not for him the more
hands-off approach of his European teachers). In
turn, the loyalty and admiration he inspired suggests
that his commitment to teaching represents a
substantial part of the contribution that Cook made
to Australian art. Among his responsibilities as a
teacher was to take the senior students in life
drawing. Here he maintained an academic, ‘Sladeian’
approach, but this did not prevent him altogether
from embracing innovative concepts. It was an
excited Cook who in the late 1940s introduced
students to the experimental line drawings of fellow
expatriate Godfrey Miller.84
Cook also taught what he termed ‘ColourTheory’, developed in response to French postimpressionist work. As one of his students, Ernest
Smith, recalled ‘colour, and the theory of colour were
used in a very formal way, and were to take up much
of Cook’s endeavours as a painter’.85 That Cook
had moved on considerably from his earlier
preoccupation with the old masters in general, and
British tradition in particular, is illustrated by
Elizabeth Bay (c. 1948; Art Gallery of Western
Australia, Perth). This view from his apartment
window combines meticulous composition with a
near pointillist style of paint application,
communicating colour and form in dense networks
of square, accentuated brushmarks. At this stage,
Cook was known for the careful planning of his
work, ‘each brushstroke, its colour, its tonal value
and chromatic intensity carefully worked out’.86
This kind of approach did not always end in success.
As Douglas Dundas, his colleague at East Sydney
Technical College, later remarked, ‘driven by this
compulsion for excellence, he went on and on, often
killing his creation in trying to perfect it’.87
Cook applied his perfectionism to all other aspects
of his life, including his teaching of art theory and
history. As Dundas recalled, ‘preparing a lecture was
like planning a military campaign – overall strategy,
tactics, reinforcement and supply, down to the last
detail’.88 Cook’s surviving manuscripts, neatly typed
and accompanied by slides and diagrams (the latter
produced by himself), attest not only to his extensive
knowledge of the history of western art, but are also
imbued with his practitioner’s experience. Three
lectures aimed to expand on his earlier ‘Notes on
Painting’. Entitled ‘The Renaissance’, ‘Let There Be
Light’, and ‘Colour’, they summarised Cook’s
exhaustive research into these subjects. 89 At times,
his notes read like transcripts of imaginary
conversations with old and modern masters, ranging
from Cimabue to Paul Cézanne, so intimate appears
his knowledge of their working methods and
professional preoccupations.
In his often quite humorous lectures, Cook never
mentioned any direct preference for a formalist
reading of western art, but freely admitted in the
opening paragraphs on the Renaissance that he could
not talk ‘about the psychological or other personal
factors in an artist’s make-up which are – no doubt
– responsible for the peculiar trends or idiosyncrasies
in his work. This would be quite beyond me.’90
Bound by a sense of personal integrity, Cook was
primarily concerned with introducing students to
processes and problems of the pictorial
representation of natural phenomena. He was
convinced of the overwhelming importance of light
in the painter’s artistic endeavour and he explained
his findings through painstaking analysis of a wide
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79
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
range of chronologically ordered historical examples,
rather like Duncan had done during Cook’s own
student days in Edinburgh.
Cook’s teaching of the formal principles of
western art deeply affected his students and is
remembered to this day by way of some of his
favourite sayings, such as ‘The principle is the germ
of the truth’.91 According to his student Jocelyn
Maughan, Cook (also affectionately referred to as
‘Jimmy ‘or ‘Cookie’) had many such sayings, and
otherwise impressed his students with his firsthand
knowledge of the European tradition in art and his
obvious scholarship. In her tribute to Cook,
Maughan wrote in 1960:
In James Cook I found a teacher possessed of
vast knowledge and a rare gift of sympathy and
understanding of different approaches to
painting. He gave each student an appreciation
of the individual’s aim and work and helped each
one with his practical experience of the
principles and technique of painting. Both as a
person and as a teacher he was one of the finest
people I have known. 92
It was Cook’s ability to express himself in a plain,
straightforward manner, combined with his detailed
knowledge of the history and practice of art, which
surely influenced his appointment as art critic for
the Sydney Daily Telegraph, a position he held from
1954 to 1958. Undoubtedly, the additional task of
writing two or three reviews per week in his
conscientious manner further dissipated his creative
energy and undermined plans for exhibitions of his
own work. He struggled with the formal constraints
of critical writing, especially with the tight limit of
about 250 words per piece, but always managed to
deliver his column on time. Published under the
heading ‘James Cook’s Art Reviews’, his comments
reflect the tone and content of his lectures, sometimes
humorous, but always focused on the formal
principles of the pictorial arts. Thus in his review of
the 29th annual exhibition of the Contemporary
Group in 1957, Cook saw ‘nothing outstanding –
just a modest diversity, mixed with a little
carelessness, but never with strain and pomp’.93 In
more specific reference to the works on show he
observed that:
In ‘Memories of Venice’ [Desiderius] Orban,
succumbing to an impulse, tries his hand at
abstract design. We know that organised lines,
shapes and colours can, in themselves, be
mysteriously moving. We also know, as Orban
must as well, that much contemporary ‘abstract’
[art] is the last resort of incompetence and or
exasperation. His effort is a restless fidget with
80
coloured pastels on an opaque black ground.
Grace Cossington Smith sharply disagrees with
this capricious whim in ‘The Dressing Table.’
In this she tries to hold broken light even in the
unmixed paint of every brushstroke. Using
prismatic colour without much Impressionist
logic she still infuses her work with reverence
for the spectacle of light – poetically felt as a
vibrating miracle.94
Not surprisingly, Cook’s brand of formalist
dogmatism did not go unopposed. One anonymous
contemporary, who supported a more intuitive
approach to painting insisted that ‘anyone who
depends on theory like that should be in a lunatic
asylum’. But apparently that same artist, when
needing to collect ‘some of his own paintings for an
exhibition… asked Cook to make the selection’.95
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Cook
then had his detractors, but on all accounts
made no real enemies for himself in the Australian
art world. His criticism, judicious yet never ad
hominem, written in a polite era that preceded, say,
Robert Hughes, helps explain this.
Despite his reputation for being a traditionalist,
Cook supported artists who worked in a more
modernist mode than he ever did. This is borne out
in his unwavering support for William Dobell, his
friend and confidante of many years. Like Cook,
Dobell was from a modest background, and during
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 9 Photograph: Portrait of James Cook, c.1958.
Collection of Jocelyn Maughan.
The Journal of New Zealand Art History, volume 26, 2005
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
Copyright. Reproduction forbidden.
Fig. 10 James Cook, [Italian Landscape], c.1959, oil, dimensions unknown. Present location unknown.
student years had to support himself with a variety
of day jobs. He was awarded the New South Wales
Society of Artists’ Travelling Scholarship in 1929 and
elected to study at the Slade School of Art, where he
won the 1930 prize for figure painting. While in
Europe, he worked alongside Cook and other
Australians on art projects in London and
Glasgow.96 In 1939 Dobell joined the teaching staff
at East Sydney Technical College, a post which he
held until 1941. That year, he was drafted into the
Civil Construction Corps, where he reconnected
with Cook and fellow artist Joshua Smith in the
camouflage unit. He was subsequently attached to
the Allied Works Council and used his wartime
service to produce some of his most memorable
portraits, including the controversial Archibald
Prize-winning Portrait of an Artist (Joshua Smith)
(1943; Private Collection).97
Cook considered Dobell’s portraiture, which
combined impressionist and expressionist influences,
to be an island of excellence in a sea of mediocrity.
Commenting on his friend’s prize-winning Helena
Rubinstein (1957; National Gallery of Victoria,
Melbourne) he enthused: ‘It is Dobell again at his
best – a spirited fusion of an artist’s inspired powers
with his subject’s living character, arrested on
canvas…. Its dignified design, appropriate color,
generous movements and trance like breadth of
execution, express the essence of a vital personality.’98
Dobell
succeeded
where Cook
himself had failed.
Copyright.
Reproduction
forbidden.
He had fully exploited the opportunities afforded
to him during his military service and used the
lessons learned during his student years to develop
a highly original, expressive and altogether more
contemporary style. An early example of this is
Dobell’s three-quarter length portrait of Cook (1942;
present location unknown). 99 Here Dobell’s
informal style not only captures his friend’s well
documented, impish sense of humour, but also
emphasises his professional maturity and sense of
purpose. Later Dobell would describe Cook (fig.
9) as the ‘most exasperatingly likeable person’ he had
known, characterised by a ‘genuine interest in the
welfare of others and the desire to help at all times’.100
It was Cook’s tendency to place the needs of
others ahead of his own which most undermined his
own artistic progress. In Dundas’s opinion, Cook
was only able to overcome the problems with his
own painting when able to paint continuously. This
obviously necessitated a complete break from his
obligations as a teacher and critic, and in 1959 he
finally decided to put his own interests first. With
his wife, he once more travelled to Belgium, Spain
and Italy, where he painted the Tuscan countryside
The Journal of New Zealand Art History, volume 26, 2005
81
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
(fig. 10). To his friends, his last oils served as
poignant reminders of what might have been.
Capturing the scenery in broad, vivid brushstrokes
and patches of glowing colour, they are closer in style
to Rupert Bunny’s impressionism than to Cook’s
own earlier, moderate interpretations of
pointillism.101 They suggest a more relaxed James
Cook, a painter who was able to enjoy his craft
before the sites that had inspired so many of his
artistic heroes.
Unfortunately, Cook’s new found freedom was
short-lived. He contracted pneumonia and died at
Florence, aged 55, on 17 February 1960. His many
Australian friends paid their tribute in December of
that year, when they celebrated his life and work with
a memorial exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries,
Sydney. The retrospective was considered ‘not only
a record of his art, but a reminder of the man, who
as a painter, teacher, and art critic was regarded with
more general affection than any other person in the
Sydney art world’.102 In New Zealand, Cook’s
passing went largely unnoticed. While some
remembered him personally, as reflected by the
recollections of Basil Honour and Ernest Smith,
there were no obituaries and no memorial
exhibitions. Once a bright, young star of the
Canterbury art scene, his career remained all but
forgotten until the first surveys of New Zealand
painting were written in the late 1960s, and even then
his place was not a prominent one.
James Cook lies buried at the Cimitero
Evangelico Degli Allori in Florence, far from his
childhood home in the Heathcote Valley. When
he first set out for Europe, he carried with him the
aspirations of his Canterbury supporters, which
were ultimately disappointed by a combination of
external events and personal choices. For much of
his life, Cook appeared to be his own worst enemy.
Always mindful of the needs of others, and allowing
himself to be absorbed by any number of projects,
be that teaching, art criticism or building his house,
he was denied – or else denied himself – the
necessary continuity to develop his own artistic
practice. When he belatedly realised this and was
at last ready to put painting first, he tragically ran
out of time. In 1960 Australia mourned the passing
of a great teacher and well-informed critic, while
New Zealand had lost – this time for good – an
artist of great promise.
This article represents research in progress on James
Cook and his circle. I am grateful to Tim Jones and
Neil Roberts (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o
82
Waiwhetu), Devon Sinclair (School of Fine Arts,
University of Canterbury), Randall Watson
(Melbourne) and especially to Jocelyn Maughan
(Sydney) for their generous support of this project.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
James Shelley, ‘James Cook: An Artist of Promise’,
Art in New Zealand, v. 5, no. 19 (March 1933), p.
143.
Cook is briefly mentioned in most standard texts
on New Zealand art history, such as Gordon
Brown and Hamish Keith, An Introduction to
New Zealand Painting. Auckland: Collins, 1969,
pp. 105, 106, 110 and 118; Gil Docking, Two
Hundred Years of New Zealand Painting.
Auckland: David Bateman, 1990 (second edition),
p. 110; and Michael Dunn, New Zealand Painting:
A Concise History, Auckland: Auckland
University Press, 2003, p. 64. In his observations
that as ‘a meticulous craftsman in paint and a critic
of acknowledged integrity, Cook stood in high
personal regard among his colleagues of the postwar art world of Sydney’, Docking simply quotes
Alan McCulloch, Encyclopaedia of Australian Art,
London: Hutchinson, 1968, pp. 141-42. Cook is
also briefly mentioned in Jean Campbell,
Australian Watercolour Painters, Sydney:
Craftsman House, 1989, p. 264. However, he is
not included in the standard works on Australian
art by Bernard Smith, Robert Hughes or
Christopher Allen.
See CSA exhibition catalogues 1907-1938
(Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu
Archive). Wright was President of the CSA in
1917 and Vice-President from 1932 to 1938.
The Press, 28 November 1939, p. 4.
The Press, 2 December 1939, p. 3.
Technical College Review, December 1935, pp. 3334, provides a complete list of the first 61 works
donated.
Ibid. The collection, it was hoped, would benefit
students on several levels: ‘It will show them some
of our familiar New Zealand scenes transferred
to canvas, and the kindred mediums of expression.
It can truly be said “a nation lives not by bread
alone.” A civilised community is not measured
by its material success or its millions of population,
for on the standard of its art will posterity judge
it.’
Technical College Review, December 1935, p. 36ff.
Illustrated in Art in New Zealand, v. 5, no. 19
(March 1933), p. 157.
James Cook: birth certificate. Cook’s parents had
married in 1898 in Wellington. In 1904, Cook’s
father was 37 years old and his mother, Harriet
Jane Cook (née Collins) was 29.
Shelley, p. 144.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Shelley, p. 145.
Mabel Hemsley (James Cook’s sister). Letter to
Ainslie Manson, 24 November 1977. (Artist’s file,
Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru.) Mabel Hemsley
recalled: ‘At the age of nine or ten, Jim’s flair for
drawing was encouraged and aided by an itinerant
“swagger” whom my father befriended and
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SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
brought back to our home unannounced. We had
no spare room in the house, but he was
accommodated in the loft of a barn where we
children had a tent in which to play…. He had
several pencil drawings accepted for the “Sydney
Bulletin.” So was able to show Jim quite a few
elementary rules on which to build.’ Hemsley,
then in her late seventies, had earlier contacted the
painter Owen R. Lee to seek advice on what to
do with her small collection of her brother’s work.
Lee encouraged her to contact the then director
of the Aigantighe, Ainslie Manson. She donated
all nine works to the gallery, including two oils,
Belgian Village (1927) and Street Scene, Belgium
(1924). The watercolours comprise Gerona, Spain
(1934), Grey Day, Gerona (n.d.) and Windy Day,
Gerona (n.d.). In addition, there are four figure
drawings, including two portraits of the artist’s
mother.
Shelley, p. 145.
Ibid. For Wauchop, see Hal Wauchop, An Artist
in the Family: The Life and Times of W. S.
Wauchop, Christchurch: H. Wauchop, 1995.
Ibid.
Canterbury College School of Art records, School
of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury. In 1919,
for example, Cook won the prize for the Best Kept
Sketch Book by Junior Students, for Drawing
from Antique Heads, Still life Studies (first and
second year), Elementary Design (second year)
and third prize for a Book Cover. That year, fellow
student Rhona Haszard won the prize for first
year Drawing from Plants and subsequently
shared many of the available awards with Cook.
Shelley, p. 146.
Shelley, p. 145ff.
Neil Roberts. Letter to the author, 7 July 2005.
Neil Roberts refers to a citation held at the
Canterbury Museum. Dated 1934 and signed by
Dr James Hight and James Shelley, it states that
Rosa Sawtell was the Founder of the Society in
1921.
The Press, 21 Sept. 1940, p. 14. Rosa Sawtell (née
Budden), a close friend of Margaret Stoddart and
former pupil of T. S. Cousins, was best known
for her work in watercolours, landscapes and
flower studies, which she exhibited regularly at
art societies. She married Claude Sawtell, a
successful farmer and grain merchant, who died
in the late 1910s. Rosa Sawtell, one of the more
generous benefactors to the arts in Christchurch
in the early twentieth century, also donated a work
to the Technical College collection.
Canterbury College School of Art records, School
of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury. For an
example of his earlier figure drawings, see Art in
New Zealand, v. 1, no. 4 (June 1929), p. 260.
(Short-time Study of the Nude.)
This work is in the collection of the Centre of
Contemporary Art (formerly CSA) and is on
indefinite loan to the Christchurch Club.
Ibid.
For a chronology of Nicoll’s career, see Neil
Roberts, Archibald Nicoll, Christchurch: Robert
McDougall Art Gallery, 2000, pp. 31-32.
Shelley, p. 146.
Ibid.
30 Shelley, p. 153.
31 Ibid.
32 Arthur James Murch had come to Europe on a
travelling scholarship awarded by the New South
Wales Society of Artists in 1925. For Murch, see
Christopher Allen, Art in Australia, London:
Thames & Hudson, 1997, p. 94; and Alan
McCulloch, Encyclopedia of Australian Art,
London: Hutchinson, 1969 (second edition), p.
395.
33 For Boxall, see McCulloch, p. 89.
34 The Press, 10 September 1931, p. 13. A work by
Boxall, Porte St. Croix, Bruges, was reproduced
in colour in Art in New Zealand, v. 3, no. 12 (June
1931), p. 273. The same issue also published
Boxall’s Observations on the Canterbury Society
of Arts Exhibition, pp. 255-66. These observations
reflect many opinions that Cook later conveyed
to his students.
35 Shelley, p. 153.
36 James Cook 1904-1960 (exhibition catalogue)
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1960, n.p.
37 Illustrated in Art in New Zealand, v. 5, no. 19
(March 1933), p. 144.
38 Illustrated in Art in New Zealand, v. 2, no. 6
(December 1929), p. 135.
39 Lyttelton Times, 2 April 1928, p. 3.
40 The Press, 5 April 1929, p. 8.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Canterbury College School of Art Annual Report,
June 1930, p. 34.
44 Sketch Club Exhibition Catalogues, School of
Fine Arts, University of Canterbury. Having first
served on the council in 1925, Cook became the
Club’s president in 1929, serving as vice-president
in 1930 and 1931. Angus was joint honorary
secretary at that time. James Cook may have also
shared a studio with Alfred Cook and Angus. He
has painted them working alongside each other
in a small oil, probably dating from the early 1930s.
See Webb’s Auction Catalogue, ‘Fine New
Zealand Paintings, Jewellery and Decorative Arts’,
9-11 December 2003, lot 26.
45 Art in New Zealand, v. 1, no. 4 (June 1929), p.
273.
46 The Press, 15 June 1929, p. 20.
47 Illustrated in Art in New Zealand, v. 1, no. 4 (June
1929), p. 259.
48 Artists’ file, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o
Waiwhetu. See also The Press, 10 September 1931,
p. 13 and 26 October 1934, p. 25; Art in New
Zealand, v. 4, no. 18 (December 1932), p. 97.
49 Shelley, p. 153.
50 Ibid.
51 Shelley, p. 154.
52 Art in New Zealand, v. 4, no. 18 (December 1932),
p. 97.
53 Basil Honour, ‘A Life in Art’, Art New Zealand,
no. 42 (Autumn 1987), p. 65.
54 Ibid. Honour continues: ‘Looking back, I am
quite sure that James Cook sowed seeds of change
and development in my own outlook and also in
the life and work of Louise Henderson and Rita
Angus.’
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid.
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83
SIGNS OF GENIUS APPARENT
57 Art in New Zealand, v. 6, no. 21 (September 1933),
p. 55.
58 Art in New Zealand, v. 8, no. 2 (December 1935),
p. 117.
59 Jocelyn Maughan. Letter to the author, 5 February
2005. According to Maughan, Cook spoke
Spanish and even fought in the war on the side of
the Republicans.
60 Art in New Zealand, v. 7, no. 26 (December 1934),
p. 63ff.
61 Art in New Zealand, v. 7, no. 26 (December 1934),
p. 62.
62 The Press, 28 March 1935, p. 8.
63 Ibid.
64 The Press, 19 March 1937, p. 4.
65 Art in New Zealand, v. 6, no. 21 (September 1933),
p. 55.
66 See James Cook 1904-1960 (exhibition catalogue),
Manawatu Art Gallery and Aigantighe Art
Gallery, Timaru, 1984. The catalogue states: ‘Nos
5, 6, 7 were painted on Cook’s second visit to
Europe at the same time as he met Frances
Hodgkins in Spain. Hodgkins... met many fellow
New Zealanders and was particularly attracted to
Cook because of his youth and admiration for her
work. (see green study folder).’ This folder is no
longer extant. Hodgkins herself, who was
working in Tossa de Mar from September 1935 to
February 1936, makes no mention of Cook in
published letters.
67 See Robin Kay and Tony Eden, Portrait of a
Century, Wellington: Millwood Press, 1983, p. 61.
This work, shown at the New Zealand Academy
of Fine Arts in 1938, was purchased with a T. G.
MacCarthy Trust Grant and presented to the
National Art Gallery. The Academy had
previously purchased Cook’s drawing Forty
Winks in 1931 and presented it to the National
Art Gallery in 1936.
68 The Press, 2 April 1938, p. 9.
69 See The Press, 26 October 1934, p. 25 for a review
of the second exhibition of the New Zealand
Society of Arts, which included several works by
Cook. No. 106 was Valley in Catalunga [sic], a
‘dappled sweep of a hill, down to a village, with
its fields alternatively green and reddish brown...’.
70 Daily Telegraph, 5 December 1960, p. 10.
71 Jonathan Black, The Sculpture of Eric Kennington,
London: Lund Humphries, 2002.
72 Exhibition Catalogue, Notanda Gallery, Sydney,
25 May to 6 June 1942.
73 See for example Cook’s undated sketchbook,
presented in 1968 to the Manawatu Art Gallery
by Basil Honour.
74 Daily Telegraph, 5 December 1960, p. 10.
Although several biographical sources mention
Cook’s service with the Australian forces, his name
does not appear on the list of World War Two
artists published by the Australian War Memorial.
75 See foreword, Art in Australia, series 4, no. 6
(June-August 1942), p. 9. No author is given for
the article, but Peter Bellew was the editor of the
publication at that time.
76 Sydney Morning Herald, 26 May 1942, p. 7.
77 Illustrated in M. R. D. Foot, Art and War, London:
Imperial War Museum, 1990, colour plate 39 (n.p.).
The picture may have been first exhibited as Night
84
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
Convoy. See War Paintings by Capt. James Cook,
Farmer’s Blaxland Galleries, Sydney, September,
October 1945, no. 18.
James Cook 1904-1960 (exhibition catalogue)
Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, 1960, (n.p.). C. R.
McKerihan, a fellow veteran, states that ‘whilst in
New Guinea, he [Cook] painted a jungle scene as
a mural and won a competition with this painting.
It now hangs in the War Museum in Canberra.’
The Australian War Memorial archives list this
painting as commissioned by the Australian
Comforts Fund.
Sydney Morning Herald, 26 September 1945, p.
5.
See Alfred Herbert Cook, artist’s file,
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.
Daily Telegraph, 5 December 1960, p. 10.
Jocelyn Maughan. Letter to the author, 5 February
2005.
Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery of
Western Australia, Report of Trustees, June 1950,
1951 and 1952; Sydney Daily Telegraph, 5
December 1960, p. 10.
Ernest Smith, ‘Memories of Three New Zealand
Expatriate Painters’, Art New Zealand, no. 1
(August-September, 1976), p. 13.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See James Cook 1904-1960, n.p.
Ibid.
Unpublished manuscripts, private collection,
Australia.
Ibid.
Jocelyn Maughan. Letter to the author, 5 February
2005.
James Cook 1904-1960, n.p.
Daily Telegraph, 4 September 1957, unpaginated
clipping, Jocelyn Maughan collection.
Ibid.
Daily Telegraph, 5 December 1960, p. 10.
See James Cook 1904-1960, n.p.
See Robert Hughes, The Art of Australia,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, p. 182ff.
Daily Telegraph, dated 1957, unpaginated clipping,
Jocelyn Maughan collection.
Illustrated in James Gleeson, William Dobell,
London: Thames & Hudson, 1964, no. 34.
James Cook 1904-1960, n.p.
James Cook 1904-1960, cover illustration.
Daily Telegraph, clipping dated December 1960,
Jocelyn Maughan collection. Maughan was the
driving force behind the memorial exhibition. It
comprised 44 titled works and an unspecified
number of sketches, from both private and public
collections. In his home country, Cook’s legacy
was belatedly acknowledged in a similar manner
in 1984, when the Aigantighe Art Gallery and
Manawatu Art Gallery combined their resources
to stage a retrospective exhibition, ‘James Cook
1904-1960’, comprising 34 works. The slender
catalogue also contained a first, if incomplete,
chronology of Cook’s life. This remains the largest
exhibition of his work in New Zealand to date.
The Journal of New Zealand Art History, volume 26, 2005