Peter Cook’s paintings, from Bucks County to Maine, the Tuscan hills and beyond, show his love for the outdoors.
By: Ilene Dube
As the most colorful time of the year reaches its peak, it is fitting that an exhibit of Peter Cook’s paintings is on view at the Gratz Gallery in New Hope, Pa. His landscape paintings embody his love for the outdoors and the capriciousness of nature: Farmers cutting hay and bundling it into giant Shredded Wheat biscuits; bare trees bending in the wind, testing the boundaries of their physicality; dark clouds suggesting a coming storm.
"He said he was an amateur meteorologist and would only have to sniff the air," says his daughter, Paula, pouring tea in a light-filled room of the family estate in Kingston. The views from the windows show the rolling acres and a gazebo built by her father. "He would base his day on the weather. It was the farmer/sailor in him he lived the outdoors. When he chopped a tree, he knew what kind of fire it would make." Apples and hickories made the best fires; elms disappointed.
When Mr. Cook painted a fishing scene, he would be out there in his own boat, sitting on the water. "He was comfortable outdoors, and he knew fishing start to finish. It gives a different feel to the paintings, a companionship. He knew everything about the bass," she says, sipping tea. "And my father loved tea time."
On a crisp, brilliantly sunny day, Peter B. Cook, son of the artist, and his wife, Sally, have arrived at Heathcote Farm in Kingston, where Joan Cook, the artist’s widow, still lives, and Paula lives part time. They have come from Cambridge, Mass., for the opening at the Gratz Gallery.
Peter G. Cook (1915-1992) was born in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., and moved with his family to this property as a boy. As an architecture student at Princeton University, Mr. Cook met his future bride at a dance. Joan, then 16, was the daughter of New Hope Impressionist John Folinsbee, and in more ways than one it was a match made in heaven.
Mr. Folinsbee took the young architecture student under his wing and taught him to paint. Soon, Mr. Cook became Mr. Folinsbee’s driver and companion on sketching trips. "He taught me the works: how to mix colors, how to pick out a subject from the vast panorama of a valley, what to look for, what to leave out," Mr. Cook wrote. "I soon found myself drifting away from architecture into painting."
He also studied at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New York. For 36 years, Mr. Cook and Mr. Folinsbee worked side-by-side. When the two worked together on murals for the Federal Fine Arts Commission, their sections were so similar, even the artists couldn’t tell them apart. The family cohesiveness remains to this day; son Peter is cataloging his grandfather’s work.
"The Folinsbee influence is so strong the spontaneity of brushstroke," says Christine McHugh of the Gratz Gallery. "It’s a glimpse, not a study." From palm trees of the tropics to the fall foliage of Maine and Bucks County, Mr. Cook used a palette knife to suggest detail.
After completing a Pulitzer Traveling Scholarship in 1939, Mr. Cook returned to the family farm in Kingston and converted the old stone horse barn into the studio and house where he and Joan raised four children. One wall of the kitchen contains a mural Mr. Cook painted in the 1940s, showing the farm as it looked then, with chicken and turkey houses. Mr. Cook’s father, who worked in real estate in New York, had been a gentleman farmer, but Peter G. Cook actually worked the land. On 100 acres, he raised wheat, oats, corn and alfalfa with the help of a deaf farm hand, George Washington Trotman, who also served as a subject in his paintings.
Part of what makes the exhibit at the Gratz Gallery special is how it represents a pictorial history of the region. Where, today, we see housing developments, Mr. Cook’s paintings show farmers harvesting potatoes on furrowed land in 1946.
In addition to the farming life, Mr. Cook played clarinet with the Raritan Symphonic Band, performed and produced for the Princeton Community Players and coached hockey at Princeton University.
Although he painted hundreds of landscapes (in addition to 100 paintings at the Gratz Gallery, there are several hundred in his studio and on the walls of the houses at Heathcote Farm), portraits were his bread-and-butter work. The landscapes did not sell as well, and the farm barely broke even.
"In his portraits, he connects with the subjects, capturing the essence of the person," says Ms. McHugh.
Peter B. Cook, who worked as executive producer for Antiques Roadshow, gave a tour of the family property in Kingston. After entering through the gates, a visitor sees two stone houses: the first the larger of the two is the original house bought by his grandfather in the early 1900s, with 480 acres fronting on U.S. 1.
In the mid-’70s, after Peter’s grandmother died, the house was converted to condominiums. About 10 years ago, Peter’s sister, Paula, and her husband, David Sculley, began buying the property back, condo by condo. About two years ago, they had acquired all the condos and hired Clifford Zink, the preservation architect who had helped to convert it to condos in the ’70s, to turn it back into a single-family private residence. The ballroom, where Paula’s grandmother would host chamber concerts, is about twice the size as many Princeton restaurants.
The ballroom serves as a gallery of sorts, with a painting of the Trenton train yard painted by John Folinsbee and a portrait of a well-suited gardener, clippers in hand, painted by Mr. Cook. "That’s Carlo," says Peter. "He always wore a jacket and tie to work, as gardeners do in Italy." The family spent a year in the Tuscan Hills outside Florence in the mid ’50s.
"I bought the house to have it back in the family," says Paula, whose painterly genes emerge in her use of color as a quiltmaker. "But stewardship of a place like this is a tall order. It’s a great house to play in, but for us it’s just a vacation house." The stone manor is back on the market.
Beyond the main house is the old barn Peter G. Cook converted to his home, and a gallery. About 80 acres of the property was given to the state as a land preserve by Peter and Paula’s grandmother. "She was a naturalist," says Paula. "She would take me looking for trout lilies."
We pass by the tennis courts Mr. Cook built by hand in 1942. Peter, who taught English at St. George’s School in Rhode Island before his 33-year career at WGBH in Boston, takes me into the house he grew up in to see his father’s mural on the kitchen wall. Here, too, are many original paintings on the panels of the cabinets, some by Mr. Cook and some by friends who came to visit. These depict family life at Heathcote Farm: A grape arbor, Paula in her high chair, family scenes and scenes from the Community Players, tennis, dancing, playing the clarinet alongside a banjo player who has tossed his instrument into the air. At least three of these were painted by Joan Cook, and they show a style and sense of color that is somewhat different from the others. Yet when asked why she never pursued her artistic talent, she says, "My father and husband painted as I would have liked to so I raised the children and took care of everything else."
In the dining room, we see the table and chairs Mr. Cook crafted from hardwood, as well as a side table with inlaid Mercer tiles. There is a portrait of John Folinsbee by Mr. Cook. "I liked the frames he made for his paintings," says Mrs. Cook. "They are simple."
We climb up steep steps to Mr. Cook’s second-floor studio; Mrs. Cook spryly maneuvers these. The studio is pretty much as it would have been when Mr. Cook was alive. Hundreds of paintings on masonite are stacked against the walls, and an easel holds a painting. A large window looks out over an apple and pear orchard Mr. Cook planted himself.
"This is where he worked and we ran through and played," says Peter.
"Pop worked at home and was always here and always distractible," says Peter. "You could always get him to do something after school, to skate or throw a ball. I had the benefit of three generations my grandparents were around, and friends of all ages of our parents were our friends too."
Mr. Cook, who coached Princeton University hockey teams while his three sons were students there, loved to skate. "He would skate all the way into Princeton," says his daughter, fondly recalling the days when winters were colder and there were no restrictions about skating on Carnegie Lake.
"Pop said what he did playing the clarinet, gardening, farming, playing tennis and hockey it was all an excuse not to paint," says Peter. "But he was never idle."
Paula says her father was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise sort. "That’s why you see a lot of dawn paintings," she adds.
The 100 paintings at the Gratz Gallery depict not only the history of the land, but the great joy Mr. Cook took in that land. There is a finality to his very last painting the still water at the end of the day, a buoy calmly floating as the light promises something new in a world beyond.
Peter Cook A Journey in Light is on view at the Gratz Gallery and Conservation Studio, 30 W. Bridge St., New Hope, Pa., through Nov. 26. Gallery hours: Wed.-Sat. 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sun. noon-6 p.m. and by appointment. For information, call (215) 862-4300. On the Web: www.gratzgallery.com