William Edwards Cook
Encyclopedia
William Edwards Cook was an American
-born expatriate artist, architectural patron, and long-time friend of American writer Gertrude Stein
. Following his 1903 departure from the U.S., Cook resided in Paris
, Rome
, Russia
, and on the island of Majorca, in the Balearic Islands off the eastern coast of Spain. Today he is chiefly remembered not for his artistic achievements, but because, during World War I, he taught Stein to drive an automobile so that she could contribute to the French war effort, and because, in 1926, he commissioned the Swiss architect Le Corbusier
(whose career was at an early stage) to design an innovative cubist home, on the outskirts of Paris, now called Maison Cook or Villa Cook.
, in the northeast section of the state. In the early 1890s, it was nationally known as a horseracing center, a distinction that earned it the popular name of the Lexington of the North. The son of an Iowa lawyer who also owned a number of farms, Cook left home to study at the Art Institute of Chicago
in 1898 and then, shortly after that, at the National Academy of Design in New York. As was customary among aspiring artists, he then moved on to Paris in 1903, where he was a student of animal painter Jean-Paul Laurens
and the famous (if much maligned) French academic master, the aging Adolphe-William Bouguereau, at the Académie Julian.
to paint a portrait of Pope Pius X
(the first American to do so). As a result, Cook was soon regarded as a young society artist (somewhat in the manner of John Singer Sargent
, whom he admired and was acquainted with), and so received a flood of requests from other dignitaries to have their portraits painted.
and her companion, Alice B. Toklas
. Consequently, the three became close and loyal friends, in part because he frequently brought influential visitors to the Saturday evening soirees at Stein's apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, among them (as Stein reported later in her first autobiography) "a great many from Chicago, very wealthy stout ladies and equally wealthy tall good-looking thin ones." By way of her soirees and other events, Stein introduced Cook to scores of Modern-era artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso
, Georges Braque
, Henri Matisse
, Ernest Hemingway
, Guillaume Apollinaire
, Jacques Lipchitz
, Robert Graves
, and so on.
through the Arc de Triomphe
in July 1919. For several years after the war, Cook was a Red Cross worker in the Caucasus region of the USSR (and perhaps, as is sometimes suggested, a Secret Service source as well), providing food and other aid to refugees in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917
. Prior to Cook's departure on that, he and Moallic were married on March 2, 1922, at an informal ceremony in which Stein and Toklas were their legal witnesses.
. Majorca had by then become an affordable refuge for expatriate artists and writers, most notably Robert Graves. In their declining years, both William and Jeanne Cook turned to painting, and both became active participants in the island's artistic community. They spent their remaining years in the El Terreno district of Palma de Majorca, and are buried in above ground vaults in a small religious cemetery in the nearby district of Genova
.
once said to Cook (as the latter reports in his letters), "[Stein] treats you better than anyone else. I think she likes you." To which Cook replied, "Of course, she always did, and I always liked her." In Stein's writings, there are frequent references to Cook, but almost never to his art. When conversing, they apparently almost always talked about bullfighting, religion, money, automobiles, and memories of their respective childhoods in the country that they both still loved (if preferably from a distance), the place that they fondly referred to in conversation and correspondence as "our native land."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-born expatriate artist, architectural patron, and long-time friend of American writer Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
. Following his 1903 departure from the U.S., Cook resided in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, and on the island of Majorca, in the Balearic Islands off the eastern coast of Spain. Today he is chiefly remembered not for his artistic achievements, but because, during World War I, he taught Stein to drive an automobile so that she could contribute to the French war effort, and because, in 1926, he commissioned the Swiss architect Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
(whose career was at an early stage) to design an innovative cubist home, on the outskirts of Paris, now called Maison Cook or Villa Cook.
Formative years
Cook grew up in the small community of Independence, IowaIndependence, Iowa
Independence is a city in and the county seat of Buchanan County, Iowa, United States. The population was 5,966 in the 2010 census, a decline from 6,014 in the 2000 census...
, in the northeast section of the state. In the early 1890s, it was nationally known as a horseracing center, a distinction that earned it the popular name of the Lexington of the North. The son of an Iowa lawyer who also owned a number of farms, Cook left home to study at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
in 1898 and then, shortly after that, at the National Academy of Design in New York. As was customary among aspiring artists, he then moved on to Paris in 1903, where he was a student of animal painter Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens
Jean-Paul Laurens , was a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style.Born in Fourquevaux, he was a pupil of Léon Cogniet and Alexandre Bida...
and the famous (if much maligned) French academic master, the aging Adolphe-William Bouguereau, at the Académie Julian.
Society painter
A boost in Cook's career took place in 1907, when, while living temporarily in Rome, his request was approved by the VaticanRoman Curia
The Roman Curia is the administrative apparatus of the Holy See and the central governing body of the entire Catholic Church, together with the Pope...
to paint a portrait of Pope Pius X
Pope Pius X
Pope Saint Pius X , born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the 257th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 1903 to 1914. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized. Pius X rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting traditional devotional practices and orthodox...
(the first American to do so). As a result, Cook was soon regarded as a young society artist (somewhat in the manner of John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
, whom he admired and was acquainted with), and so received a flood of requests from other dignitaries to have their portraits painted.
Expatriate modernist
When Cook returned to Paris, he became somehow acquainted with Gertrude SteinGertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...
and her companion, Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century.-Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein:...
. Consequently, the three became close and loyal friends, in part because he frequently brought influential visitors to the Saturday evening soirees at Stein's apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, among them (as Stein reported later in her first autobiography) "a great many from Chicago, very wealthy stout ladies and equally wealthy tall good-looking thin ones." By way of her soirees and other events, Stein introduced Cook to scores of Modern-era artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
, Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
, Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz was a Cubist sculptor.Jacques Lipchitz was born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, son of a building contractor in Druskininkai, Lithuania, then within the Russian Empire...
, Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
, and so on.
Friendship with Stein
On a more personal level, Stein and Cook were also friends for other reasons. Shortly before World War I, Stein and Toklas ended up vacationing together on the Spanish island of Majorca with (by coincidence) Cook and his mistress, a French artist's model and cleaning woman named Jeanne Moallic. Eventually, when the two couples returned to Paris, Cook worked in an automobile factory, then became a taxi driver, in the course of which he also test-drove Renaults. Using his taxi, Cook became Stein's driving instructor, so that she and Toklas could transport supplies for the French war effort. During this same time period, Cook may also have become a clandestine agent for the U.S. Secret Service, while continuing to work as a taxi driver. Inadvertently (as described in a piece called "A Movie" by Stein), he and Moallic apparently contributed to the arrest of U.S. Army thieves, with the result that they were invited to ride (together, in their Renault) in the famous victory paradeVictory parade
A victory parade is a type of parade held in order to celebrate a victory. Because of that, victory parades can be divided into military victory parades and more frequent sport victory parades....
through the Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe
-The design:The astylar design is by Jean Chalgrin , in the Neoclassical version of ancient Roman architecture . Major academic sculptors of France are represented in the sculpture of the Arc de Triomphe: Jean-Pierre Cortot; François Rude; Antoine Étex; James Pradier and Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire...
in July 1919. For several years after the war, Cook was a Red Cross worker in the Caucasus region of the USSR (and perhaps, as is sometimes suggested, a Secret Service source as well), providing food and other aid to refugees in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
. Prior to Cook's departure on that, he and Moallic were married on March 2, 1922, at an informal ceremony in which Stein and Toklas were their legal witnesses.
Maison Cook
Cook's father died in 1924, at which time he became an heir (along with a sister and two brothers) to a substantial amount of money. In connection with the settlement of his parents' estate, as well as to enable his wife to get to know his relatives (and vice versa), the Cooks drove across the U.S., from east to west and back again, during a period of about five months in 1925, staying for one month in his Iowa hometown. Returning to Europe, they decided to permanently settle in France. The sculptor Jacques Lipchitz introduced them to architect Le Corbusier, then largely unknown, who, during this time, was designing a series of villas, including innovative homes for Michael Stein (Gertrude's brother) and Lipchitz himself. In 1926, they commissioned the architect to design what Le Corbusier said was the first "true cubic house," called Villa Cook or Maison Cook, on the outskirts of Paris, at 6 rue Denfert Rochereau in Boulogne-sur-Seine.Later life
In his later life, as a friend of Stein's once noted, Cook was primarily known as "the occupant of a house built by Le Corbusier." Already dismayed in the 1930s by his continuing lack of success as an artist, he apparently gave up painting, moved temporarily in Rome, and then settled with his wife in 1936 in Palma de Majorca, in the Balearic IslandsBalearic Islands
The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...
. Majorca had by then become an affordable refuge for expatriate artists and writers, most notably Robert Graves. In their declining years, both William and Jeanne Cook turned to painting, and both became active participants in the island's artistic community. They spent their remaining years in the El Terreno district of Palma de Majorca, and are buried in above ground vaults in a small religious cemetery in the nearby district of Genova
Génova
Génova may refer to:* Spanish spelling of the city of Genoa, Italy* Génova, Quindío, a municipality in the department of Quindío, Colombia* Génova, Quetzaltenango, a municipality in the department of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala...
.
Afterword
As a friend of Gertrude Stein, Cook was one of the few who remained loyal to her throughout their lives. In part, this may have been because, without exception, she always wrote nice things about him. As American writer Robert McAlmonRobert McAlmon
Robert Menzies McAlmon was an American author, poet and publisher.-Life:McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of ten children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister....
once said to Cook (as the latter reports in his letters), "[Stein] treats you better than anyone else. I think she likes you." To which Cook replied, "Of course, she always did, and I always liked her." In Stein's writings, there are frequent references to Cook, but almost never to his art. When conversing, they apparently almost always talked about bullfighting, religion, money, automobiles, and memories of their respective childhoods in the country that they both still loved (if preferably from a distance), the place that they fondly referred to in conversation and correspondence as "our native land."
Sources
- Correspondence of William E. Cook and Gertrude Stein in the collection of the Beinecke Library, Yale University
- Roy R. Behrens "Cook, His Wife, Two Thieves and the Pope" in Tractor: Iowa Arts and Culture. Vol 6 No 1 (Winter 1998).
- Roy R. Behrens Cook Book: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le Corbusier (Bobolink Books, 2005). ISBN 0-9713244-1-7.
- Rosalind Moad 1914-16: Years of Innovation in Gertrude Stein's Writing PhD dissertation (UK: University of York, 1995).
- Gertrude Stein The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Harcourt Brace, 1933).
- Gertrude Stein Everybody's Autobiography (Random House, 1937).