SIR HERBERT COOK

OBITUARIES

SIR HERBERT COOK - A tribute to the memory of the late Sir Herbert Cook - whose death, at the age of seventy, after a long and painful illness took place on May 4th - should on no account be absent from these columns. His ties with THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE were close and numerous : he belonged, indeed, to the small group of art lovers through whose efforts this journal was founded thirty-six years ago ; he always remained a good friend of this magazine, a fact of which his membership of our Consultative Commottee was appropriately symbolic ; and for many years he was a frrquent and valued contributor to these pages. Having acknowledged this, we can but give a slight outline of the incessant activities which, in the days of his health, he also, in other fields, devoted to the furthering of the study of the art of the past ; particularly memorable and fruitful was his work as organizer of many loan exhibitions at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, his Catalogue of the Milanse Exihibition in 1899 remaining to this day an extremely valuable collection of material. As heir to the Doughty House collection, it is perhaps inevitable that his activities as a collector should tend to be eclipsed by those of his grandfather ; but many of his own additions to the family collection were of an importance which it is as well here to emphasize - we will only mention two of them, the Schiavona by Titian from the Crespi collection at Milan, and the Portrait of Titus as a Boy by Rembrandt, whose departure from Althorp for America was prevented by Sir Herbert's prompt action.

The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 74, No. 435 (Jun., 1939), p. 295