CHARLES BAYLEY COOK

Although the Who Was Who in American Art quotes 1865 to 1948 as Cook’s dates, the artist’s half-sister, Mrs. John H. Hyde presented the following: born in Portland, Maine on September 21, 1882 and died there on February 29, 1932.  Charles was the son of Selina Bayley and Charles Cook, a wholesale druggist.  He spent his youth in Portland and Brunswick, Maine, where he attended Bowdoin College; there Charles took art courses and held the position of staff artist for the Bowdoin Bugle, the college yearbook.  After graduation in 1905, Cook continued his art studies in New York, where, by 1909, he was a pupil and follower of John F. Carlson.  In the same year, he exhibited at the Portland Society of Art.  Cook never sought artistic recognition and seems rather to have been content with his daily painting.  From all indications, his progress under Carlson was rapid and led to experimentation, which provided a wide range of stylistic variation within the broad scope of the impressionistic technique.  Extant dated works range in manner from a heavily textured application of high-keyed pigment to a broadly brushed realist manner distinctly reminiscent of Carlson.  His ability to grasp the essence of light and atmosphere is also evident at this period.  Works with these characteristics were exhibited at the Sweat Memorial Art Museum (now the Portland Museum of Art) dedication show of 1911.

Cook maintained a studio in New York.  He varied his subjects and painted with equal enthusiasm a New York waterfront scene and an idyllic landscape of Woodstock.  In his discussion of Cook’s work represented by a two-man show at the Sweat Memorial Art Museum in 1913, a critic in the Portland Evening Express (7 December 1913), reported that “he paints with a bold hand and a heavy brush. . . . his drawing, too, is of high quality and, as many of his subjects are difficult in this particular, his art in delineation is not less remarkable than his clever use of color.”

Charles Cook was a member of the Woodstock artists’ colony during the period in which Carlson directed the Art Students League Summer School of Landscape Painting there.  It seems that he made several trips to England and occasionally to Bermuda.  Works from the coastal areas of Maine and St. Ives, Cornwall, are good examples of his impressionist style.  In a way slightly reminiscent of the mature work of Paul Dougherty, who also worked in Cornwall, Cook’s paintings show the application of pigment in rich impasto passages of contrasting color.  As Cook became better known in New York for these paintings, the Ferargil Gallery became his agent.  In 1917, a one-man exhibition of such work was shown there; sales indicate the show as a success.

From all indications, Cook’s subjects were chosen from favorite sites: the coasts of Maine and England; Woodstock, and New York City.  He was particularly fond of the changing seasons and depicted a wide variety of scenes in all kinds of weather.  It is likely that Cook returned to England in 1918, painting coastal scenes in his usual plein-air manner.  We know little of the last years of the artist.  In the twenties, he was active in the art society known as the Haylofters of Portland, Maine, and spent time with such fellow members as Rupert S. Lovejoy and Harriet E. Thompson.  Cook stayed active throughout most of this time, although his style changed to a broadly handled realism.  The painter died in Portland, Maine, just before turning fifty.

Source:
“Daughter and Son of Portland Show Admirable Pictures,” Portland Evening Express, 17 December 1913.

Submitted by Richard H. Love