Oil on Canvas The Riverbank by Edward W Cooke RA

Oil on Canvas The Riverbank by Edward W Cooke RA 1811 - 1880.
Featuring a river scene with fishing boats and figures.
Edward Cooke was an excellent English landscape and marine painter and gardener.
Signed to the lower left.

Edward William Cooke (1811-1880) RA FRS FZS FSA FGS River bank scene with figures, oil on canvas, signed, 20cm x 51.5cm. Edward Cooke was an excellent English landscape and marine painter, and gardener. Life and work Cooke was born in Pentonville, London, the son of well-known line engraver George Cooke; Edward was raised in the company of artists. He was a precocious draughtsman and a skilled engraver from an early age, displayed an equal preference for marine subjects (in special in sailing ships) and published his "Shipping and Craft" - a series of accomplished engravings - when he was 18, in 1829. He benefited from the advice of many of his father's associates, notably Clarkson Stanfield (whose principal marine follower he became) and David Roberts. Cooke began painting in oils in 1833, took formal lessons from James Stark in 1834 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution in 1835, by which time his style was essentially formed. Remarkably of his few drawings of ships, boats, and coastal views appear in the childhood albums of Edward William Cooke since age of four. Many of his earlier drawings are seemed to favor Dutch pastoral landscapes and animal subjects. Numerous of his drawings are influenced by Nicolaes Berghem [Berchem], Paulus Potter, or Karel Dujardin. He went on to travel and paint with great industry at home and abroad, indulging his love of the 17th-century Dutch marine artists with a visit to the Netherlands in 1837. He returned regularly over the next 23 years, studying the effects of the coastal landscape and light, as well as the works of the country's Old Masters, resulting in highly successful paintings. These included 'Beaching a Pink at Scheveningen' (National Maritime Museum, London), which he exhibited in 1855 at the Royal Academy, of which he was an Associate from 1851. In 1858, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. His work can be seen in the Tate, British Museum and the V&A.