Clarence Chatham Cook

Background

Clarence Chatham Cook was born on September 08, 1828 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, United States. He was the fourth son of Zebedee and Caroline (Tuttle) Cook, both of early American families.

Education

Cook graduated from Harvard in 1849. Later he studied architecture at Newburgh, New York, but gave it up for teaching and journalism.

Career

Cook first attracted attention in 1863 by a series of bold and satirical criticisms of a loan collection of paintings at the Sanitary Fair, New York. His spirited art column in the New York Tribune, 1863-1869, was read by every one, but so scathing, almost brutal, were his attacks on contemporary work that a delegation of his victims visited Horace Greeley to protest (to that editor’s amusement), and Cook was feared, rather than loved, by American artists.

In 1869 Greeley sent him to Paris as special correspondent, but war broke out in 1870 and drove Cook home, after some months in Italy. His Tribune connection ceased in the early seventies, owing partly to his resentment that Greeley’s successor, Whitelaw Reid, had curtailed his space. In 1869 had been published his pamphlet on The New York Central Park. Now came the following; a translation of Viardot’s Wonders of Sculpture, with a chapter by Cook on American Sculpture (1873); the text for a heliotype reproduction of Durer’s Life of the Virgin (1878) and other works besides various contributions to magazines and art books and, in 1882, a pamphlet savagely attacking the Cypriote antiquities of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the character of Cesnola under the title Transformations and Migrations of Certain Statues in the Cesnola Collection.

He and Feuardent, his friend and publisher, succeeded for some years in shaking the confidence of the public in the collection and the collector; but they were not archeologists and later Cypriote scholarship has sustained Cesnola. Cook failed to testify in the lawsuit of Feuardent vs. Cesnola which grew out of the controversy, writing the New York Times that “he had no evidence to give as to facts within his own knowledge”—certainly a reflection upon his pamphlet—yet he continued his vindictive attacks on Cesnola and the Museum from the editorial chair of The Studio, which he occupied from 1884 to 1892, when his name disappeared as editor. The magazine was financially unsuccessful and often unable to appear, but from 1886 it was beautifully illustrated by a variety of new processes, including photoetching, and Cook helped to introduce the use of etching as a reproductive art. Publication ceased in November 1894.

Achievements

• Clarence Cook ranked as a brilliant pioneer in the professional criticism of art in America. If his pen was dipped in gall, it may have been his reaction to the undiscerning praise then in vogue. He was among the first in America to appreciate the Impressionists. His style was lucid and when he was not on the war-path it was also graceful and urbane. He was much in demand as a drawing-room lecturer.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The House Beautiful: An Unabridged Reprint of the Classic Victorian Stylebook (Dover Architecture)

    ( Profusely illustrated volume by 19th-century pioneer of...)

  • ART ARTIST OUR TIME 3VLS (The Art experience in late nineteenth-century America)

    (Book by Cook)

Personality

Personally, Cook was charming. All who knew him recall his pleasant voice and manner, his gentleness and culture, the atmosphere, altogether gracious and graceful, that enveloped him.

Connections

In September 1853, Cook was married in New York to Louisa (De Windt) Whittemore, a widow, and great-great- grand-daughter of President John Adams. She was intellectual and of artistic tastes.

Father:

Zebedee Cook

Mother:

Caroline (Tuttle) Cook

Spouse:

Louisa (De Windt) Whittemore

References

• Paraphernalia! Victorian Objects (The Nineteenth Century Series)
• The Men Who Made Central Park