Edward William Cooke, 1811-1880 - John Munday

This is a biographical study of the marine painter Edward William Cooke RA, FRS, FLS, FZS (1811-1880) who, as the letters after his name will indicate, had interests far beyond the coastal views and inshore shipping of Europe which were his main subjects on canvas. He emerges as a gardener and garden designer on a grand scale, a student of geology, a plantsman, botanical illustrator, humorist, antiquarian and collector.;An exhibition of his work was held in 1970 at the Guildhall Art Gallery but the pictures shown were not a balanced reflection of Cooke's life's work. This book is, therefore, the occasion to gather together not only a more representative collection of paintings and drawings but also to point to the many-sided character of this man. He kept a diary, on which this book is based, which enables us to see where he was and what he was about almost every day of a working life spanning half a century.;Today's collectors, especially those with nautical interests such as sailing and yachting, are great admirers of Cooke's work. His output was not vast, he exhibited some 250 paintings in London, and although a tentative 700 or so entries appear in the Checklist (which is the second part of this book), these range in size from 6 x 4 inches to 6 x 4 feet and not all have yet been found or positively identified.