Why critics mocked Beryl Cooke’s “saucy” paintings

Beryl Cook’s cheerful, kitschy, bawdy paintings were beloved by the British public but ridiculed by the art establishment. One hundred years after her birth, a new exhibition calls for a radical re-evaluation of her work and legacy.

By all accounts, Beryl Cook’s career path has been impressive. A self-taught artist, she did not pick up a paintbrush until her late 30s and was 49 when she had her first exhibition. But by the time of her death in 2008, aged 81, Cook had created more than 500 works and had become one of Britain’s most famous artists.

Cook’s work was not only prolific, it was ubiquitous. Anyone who has grown up in the UK over the past 50 years must have seen her paintings. Maybe not in the gallery, but on greeting cards, tea towels, prints, calendars, postage stamps, and drinking glasses. Its characters were even made into a BBC cartoon, Bosom Pals. Cook’s distinctive characters – ordinary working-class people, often female and fleshy – are instantly recognizable. And they are always having fun. In bars and cafes, on the beach, at karaoke nights, in the bingo hall.

However, despite her commercial success, Beryl Cooke was widely ignored by the art establishment, and her works were dismissed as playful, kitsch, vulgar, and crude. It may be fun, but it’s nothing to be taken seriously. When critics turned their attention to it, the reviews were often scathing. The late art critic Brian Sewell said of Cook’s work: “It has a kind of hackneyed streak that has nothing to do with art.”