Beryl Cook's Larger than Life Art at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Written by Thomas Gilroy Friday, 20 May 2011 23:18

Bristol, England.- From Saturday June 18th through Monday 29th August, the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery will be showing ‘Beryl Cook: Larger than Life’ a celebration of one of Britain’s best-loved artists. This major retrospective exhibition features over 60 original paintings and will explore Beryl’s early career, her time in Bristol and ‘unseen Beryl’ a series of paintings from the Cook family’s own collection, which have never been seen before in public. Beryl Cook was one of this country’s most popular painters from the late 1970s until her death in 2008. People were her passion and she was a keen observer of modern life. The people in her paintings are the ones we see everyday. They shop in the malls, travel on the buses, sit in the pubs and go out on the town. They are always enjoying themselves, sometimes outrageously. The exhibition is a celebration of her life and work.

Highlights of the exhibition will include "The Last Gasp", featuring a heavily made up woman enjoying what could be her last cigarette at the bar. This was one of Beryl’s last paintings and her reaction to the smoking ban, "Ship of Fools" a 2008 painting showing Cherie and Tony Blair along with senior government figures and showing Beryl's gift for caricature, "The Kama Sutra", Beryl's interpretation of the ancient tome on sexual techniques and a series of works given to her husband John for special occasions. They feature a  couple called Tracey and Kev in a variety of amusing poses and bear a striking resemblance to Beryl and John. The exhibition will also feature sketches (Beryl and her husband John loved going out to pubs where she could watch people and make quick sketches on little cards secreted in her handbag) and some of the props Beryl used to inspire her paintings. Beryl also dabbled sculpture, needlework and paintings on ‘found objects’ including cinema seats and fire-screens, which will also be on display.

Beryl and her husband John spent several years in Bristol, inspired by the pubs and clubs and the nightlife. The exhibition will feature a collection of work from her time in the city including "Ferry Boat" and "Jazz in Winter", which Beryl gave to the museum’s permanent collection as a thank you to the people of the Bristol for welcoming her. Peter Slade from the Alexander Gallery says  “Beryl was truly ‘Britain’s favourite painter’ and one of the great social commentators of our time. Her pictures struck a chord with the ordinary man in the street precisely because they featured, and were inspired by, the same ordinary man in the street. Beryl enjoyed people enjoying themselves and was able to portray this in a truly individual style, capturing all the fun of a good night out, be it dancing the night away in a club or just having a quiet drink in the local with a group of friends. With an eye for the outrageous and the flamboyant this shy reserved woman has left an extraordinary legacy recording the popular culture of the last thirty five years.


The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery is a large museum and art gallery in Bristol, England, where it is located in the Clifton district. It holds designated museum status, granted by the national government to protect outstanding museums. The building is of Edwardian Baroque architecture and has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building.The Museum and Art Gallery's origins lie in the foundation, in 1823, of the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science and Art, sharing brand-new premises at the bottom of Park Street with the slightly older Bristol Literary and Philosophical Society. In April 1871 the Bristol Institution merged with the Bristol Library Society and on 1 April 1872 a new combined museum and library building in Venetian Gothic style was opened at the top of Park Street. In June 1899 the site of the Salisbury Club was offered for sale to the city, the tobacco baron, Sir William Henry Wills (1830—1911, later Lord Winterstoke) offering £10,000 to help buy the site and build a new City Art Gallery on it. Designed by Sir Frederick Wills in an Edwardian Baroque style work on the new building started in 1901, and opened in February 1905. Although now housed in the same building, from April 1945, the Museum and Art Gallery were formally split into separate institutions with the lower floor becoming the Museum and the upper floors the Art Gallery. As part of this restructuring, the archaeology and anthropology collections were transferred from the Art Gallery to the Museum. Today, the top floor art galleries include a collection of Chinese Glass and the "Schiller collection" of Eastern Art donated by Max Schiler, the Recorder of Bristol from 1935 to 1946 and collected by his older brother Ferdinand N Schiler. It contains a range of Chinese ceramics wares spanning different dynastic periods. Particularly fine pieces include a number of white, light blue and green-glazed (Ying Qing and Qingbai) wares from the Tang (AD 618-960) and Song (AD 960-1279) dynasties. It also holds a collection of Bristol blue glass. The Egyptology gallery contains mummies besides other items and a wall decoration made over 3,000 years ago - the Assyrian Reliefs, which were transferred from the Royal West of England Academy. It also has a significant collection of Egyptian antiquities, a considerable number derived from the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society and British School of Archaeology in Egypt. A completely rebuilt Egyptian gallery opened in 2007. A natural history gallery contains examples of aquatic habitats in the south west of England and an interactive map of local wildlife sites and a freshwater aquarium containing fish typical of the region. The museum also holds many of the prehistoric and Roman artifacts recovered before the flooding of Chew Valley Lake, and other local archaeological finds such as those from Pagans Hill Roman Temple and the Orpheus Mosaic from Newton St Loe. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Leisure-Culture/Museums-Galleries/bristol-museum-and-art-gallery-.en

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