Private view

In the three years since Beryl Cook’s work was first revealed to the public she has risen from being regarded as an interesting phenomenon to occupying a niche of her own in modern British painting. Few artists have succeeded in appealing to the broadest cross-section of the public whilst receiving a critical acclaim any serious artist would envy. Beryl has been compared with Stanley Spencer, Douanier Rousseau, Rowlandson, Hogarth, Rubens, Burra and even Chagall, but the range of these comparisons only serves to emphasise her striking individuality. In this second volume of her paintings the mixture is even richer than before. On a visit to Paris Beryl was inspired by the deft skill of waiters in a popular restaurant and also by the fetching appearance of two ladies who come and go in the Place Pigalle: both are here immortalized. Scenes in a well known pub in Chelsea where a fight broke out and in a gay disco engraved themselves on her mind and were swiftly transferred into oil on plywood. Pictures of Plymouth again feature prominently: the market, Tescos, a Bingo session, lovers in the undergrowth, dustbin men and many others, forming a Chaucerian gallery of contemporary characters which captures the spirit of our age with humorous vivacity and unblinkered realism. Almost alone in Britain among self-taught artists, her pictures are imbued with a fantastic sense of humour all of us can understand, a beguiling lack of tact Which, splurging across the permissive scene, is camouflage for truly sophisticated Wit . . . Here is a humour, so raucous and so subtle, not seen by us since Rowlandson. - Antiques and Art Monitor In many Ways Beryl Cook is the nicest thing to happen to British painting for years . . . she has all the robust forthrightness painting seems to have lost in the process of becoming modern. - Evening Standard