George Esten Cooke (1793–1849) was an itinerant
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
painter who specialized in
portrait
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...
and
landscape paintings and was one of the
South's best known painters of the mid nineteenth century.
His primary patron was the industrialist
Daniel Pratt, who built a gallery in
Prattville, Alabama
Prattville is a city located within both Autauga and Elmore counties in the State of Alabama but serves as the county seat of Autauga County. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 37,781. Nicknamed "The Fountain City" due to t ...
solely to house Cooke's paintings.
Early career and fame
Born in
St. Mary's County,
Maryland
Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
,
Cooke abandoned a fledgling career in business at an early age in order to become a full-time artist. After several years of painting portraits for a living, Cooke left for what would become a five-year tour of Europe. His time there was mostly spent learning from and copying the works of the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...
master artists, with many of Cooke's copies being sent back to the United States for show or sale.
At some time between 1826 and 1830, he made a copy in Paris of ''
The Raft of the Medusa
''The Raft of the Medusa'' (french: Le Radeau de la Méduse ) – originally titled ''Scène de Naufrage'' (''Shipwreck Scene'') – is an oil painting of 1818–19 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791� ...
'', a monumental painting by
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a French Painting, painter and Lithography, lithographer, whose best-known painting is ''The Raft of the Medusa''. Although he died young, he was one of the pi ...
depicting a notorious incident following a shipwreck. Cooke's smaller version (4' x 6') was shown in Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C, to crowds, who knew about the controversy surrounding subject. Reviews favoured the painting, which also stimulated plays, poems, performances and a children's book. It was bought by a former admiral, Uriah Phillips, who left it in 1862 to the
New York Historical Society, where it was miscatalogued as by
Gilbert Stuart and remained inaccessible, until the mistake was uncovered in 2006, after an enquiry by Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, professor of art history at the
University of Delaware
The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...
. The university's conservation department undertook restoration of the work.
[Moncure, Sue]
"The case of the missing masterpiece"
University of Delaware
The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...
, November 14, 2006. Retrieved on January 6, 2008.
After returning to the U.S., Cooke and his wife spent the next decade traveling and working with no fixed home. His work took him throughout the Southern United States, where he primarily made his living painting portraits of both famous and ordinary people, and, by the 1840s, his portraits had earned him both financial success and regional fame.
Daniel Pratt's patronage
In 1844 in
, Cooke started what would become his most important professional relationship when he met Alabama
industrialist Daniel Pratt. Pratt was immediately drawn to Cooke's work, and decided to give the artist two floors in one of his warehouses for Cooke to use as a gallery and studio.
After a few years, Pratt decided to take the unusual step of adding a separate gallery to his home in Prattville, Alabama, solely to house Cooke's art. Pratt also commissioned Cooke to paint what would become his best known work, the ''Interior of St. Peter's Rome'', a giant painting based on a smaller piece that Cooke had previously painted during his travels in Europe.
In 1867, Pratt donated ''Interior of St. Peter's Rome'' to the
University of Georgia
, mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things."
, establ ...
, where it still hangs today in the University's
chapel
A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...
. At 17 by 23.5 feet, the work was said to be the largest framed
oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
in the world at the time of its donation,
and it still ranks among the world's largest.
Death and the dispersal of his work
The health of George Cooke had never been very good, and in 1849, in
New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, he contracted
cholera and died quickly from the illness.
Nearly twenty years after his death, the gallery in Pratville was found to be infested with
dry rot
Dry rot is wood decay caused by one of several species of fungi that digest parts of the wood which give the wood strength and stiffness. It was previously used to describe any decay of cured wood in ships and buildings by a fungus which resul ...
and had to be torn down to prevent the rot from spreading. As a result, all of Cooke's work housed at the gallery wound up being destroyed or dispersed. It was this threat that prompted Daniel Pratt to donate ''Interior of St. Peter's Rome'' to the University of Georgia.
Notes and references
External links
Article on Cooke's copy of ''The Raft of the Medusa''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooke, George
1793 births
1849 deaths
Painters from Maryland
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American portrait painters
Deaths from cholera
People from St. Mary's County, Maryland
Infectious disease deaths in Louisiana
19th-century American male artists