William Delafield Cook AM (1936–2015) was an Australian artist who was known for his photorealistic landscapes. He won a number of awards, including the Order of Australia.
Early life Delafield Cook was born in Melbourne, Australia on 28 February 1936.Obituary of William Delafield Cook, The Independent, 14 May 2015 Retrieved 13 August 2020William Delafield Cook Retrieved November 2012 His grandfather, who was also named William Delafield Cook, was also a painter and had links to the Heidelberg School of Australian painting.
In 1962 he married 1962 Sally Patricia Bovington, with whom he had two daughters, and a son, the artist Jonathan Delafield Cook.
Career In 1980 Delafield Cook won the Wynne Prize for A Waterfall (Strath Creek), and in 1981 he won the Sulman Prize for A French family.
Delafield Cook taught at the University of Melbourne.
Awards In 2013 Delafield Cook was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to the visual arts as a realist painter of Australian landscapes".It's an Honour. Retrieved 3 April 2015
Later life, death Delafield Cook died after a brief illness in London on 29 March 2015, where he had been preparing for an exhibition; he was aged 79. He had long divided his time between London and Melbourne.Australian artist William Delafield Cook dies aged 78, (31 March 2015), The Australian accessed 31 March 2015
Reception Critic John McDonald, in his Art and Australia review of Deborah Hart's monograph on the artist, remarks on:...the central dilemma of Cook’s art: that a painter who has the highest aspirations for his work should strive to make his pictures as impersonal as photographs. There is no other Australian artist who has ever achieved such an unlikely balance of grand ambition and self-effacement.
Bibliography
Pierse, Simon, Australian Art and Artists in London, 1950-1965: An Antipodean Summer Retrieved November 2012 Sayers, Andrew, Australian Art, Oxford University Press Retrieved November 2012 Obituary of William Delafield Cook, The Independent, 14 May 2015 Retrieved 13 August 2020
References
External links William Delafield Cook Retrieved November 2012