Jean Cooke (Jean Bratby)

Self-Portrait

1958

On loan

Garden Museum (London, UK): Jean Cooke

Artist: Jean Cooke (Jean Bratby) 1927–2008
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1149 × 838 mm
frame: 1193 × 890 × 65 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1959
Reference: T00278

Display caption

Jean Cooke trained at the Central School of Art, Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art. From the mid-1960s she became a lecturer at the Royal College and was elected an RA in 1972. The self-portrait has been a recurring theme throughout her career. She has written: ‘Sometimes I paint self-portraits to show off, sometimes to hide away in solitude, sometimes to say ‘Here I am’, sometimes to say ‘I want to be alone’. But always there is a searching for the unknown, the previously unperceived.’

Gallery label, September 2004

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Catalogue entry

T00278 SELF-PORTRAIT 1958

Inscr. ‘Jean Bratby’ b.l.
Canvas, 45 1/4×33 (115×84).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1959.
Exh: R.A., 1959 (239).
Repr: Royal Academy Illustrated, 1959, p.51.

Painted at her father's home in Greenwich where she was then living. She said that after she had started the portrait her small son aged three did some painting on it and some of this is still to be seen.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I