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Beryl Cook, Popular Painter of Fat Ladies, Dies

by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 29 May 2008 at 9:45 PM

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Britain mourned today the loss of Beryl Cook, one of the country's most beloved artists. She died of cancer at 81 in Plymouth, a seaside town in the southwest of England. Still, she was such a jolly painter that even the reaction to her death has been sanguine and focused on her iconic portraits of fat ladies reveling in being, well, fat, rather than anything too gloomy. As Rachel Campbell-Johnston writes in the Times of London: "Cook had an infectious enthusiasm for life. It was probably this that made her so popular. It bursts out of her paintings like a stripper bursts out of a cake."

Her inspiration was Britons at their most unruly and vulgar; she was known for her eagle eye and quick, but affectionate, perceptiveness. Famous subjects include the girl at the cash counter, a prostitute giggling with another woman, and a man with a pint of beer. Yet for all her joyous capturing of society's peccadilloes, she never quite made it into the upper level of "serious" art in this country. No Tate exhibitions for Cook — widely regarded as the museum's loss.

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