image area 7" X 10" plus mat and frame.........Biography from the Archives of askARTAugust Charles Cook (1897-1990), was born in Philadelphia, the child of a salesman and amateur artist (Charles Cook) and a mother who developed an appreciation of fine furniture craftsmanship (Ann Buckley Cook). His education included training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (1917-1924), where he won its most prestigious award, the William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Scholarship, in 1921. He also studied at Harvard University. At the Academy, he met Irma Virginia Howard, a native of Balston Spa, N.Y., who also became a distinguished artist. An annual drawing award of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts honors both the Cooks and their revered instructor, Daniel Garber.The two were married in Valley Forge in 1924 before moving to Spartanburg, S.C., where August took a position teaching at Converse College. He had been a student of fine art at the Academy and educated himself in advance of teaching art history, before which time he had never studied the subject. Cook's tenure established the first art major area of study at the college, where he taught for 42 years. After his retirement in the 1960s, he purchased some 90 acres of land in rural Spartanburg County near the Pacolet River. The land included an old farm house, which he renovated to become a rustic studio. There he taught art privately through his eighties. He lived independently to the age of 93, and died in Spartanburg Regional Hospital. Cook's distinguishing contribution to his generation of artists is his woodcut engravings, executed finely enough to be mistaken for etchings. He was also a master of oil painting, considered himself a "colorist," and was an accomplished cabinet maker, having learned the craft from his father or grandfather. He mined local clay from his Spartanburg County property and using a rustic kickwheel of his own creation, threw pottery pieces that he then used in his own still lifes and in teaching. He also made carved and gilted frames for his artwork. "Cook's study of wood engraving included an in-depth consideration of its history including its use as illustration from the 15th century onward. He observed that the development of photography at the end of the 19th century spelled the end to commericial wood engraving. A few stalwart engravers persisted, such as Thomas Cole, and a handful of other artists dedicated tot he process. Cook had heard Cole lecture and had been much impressed." - from a June 3, 1993, press release of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts August Cook's work has been shown at the Library of Congress, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, the South Carolina State Museum and Audubon Artists. His work is included in the public collections in the Library of Congress ("Summer in the Mountains" [1948]); the Boston Museum of Art; the South Carolina State Art Collection; the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Butler Museum of Art, Youngstown, Ohio. He is listed in Who's Who in American Art-1973 (Jaques Cattell Press), Contemporary Artists of South Carolina; Jack Morris and Robert Smeltz; and Who's Who in American Art-1947.Submitted February 2007 by Sally Cook Parsons, granddaughter of the artist