COOK, NOEL (1896-1981)

$1,250.00
$625.00
"Untitled (Head)" (c.1950)
watercolour & gouache
53 x 38cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Cook was a famous New Zealand maori artist and comic illustrator. After working for the NZ Herald & Weekly News, he moved to Australia in the early 1920s to work at The Bulletin, Smith’s Weekly & Sunday Times.  Noel "also indulged in the higher aesthetics of water colour and oil painting", producing 150 Cartoon books, and also held a position with Australian Women's Weekly and Sydney Sunday & Daily Telegraph. He is credited as one of the first sci-fi comic artists. After serving in WWII, he moved to London to work as a freelancing illustrator in Fleet Street for a while, then gained a job as Art Editor with Amalgamated Press where he created strip cartoons on top of other freelance illustration. He held several solo exhibitions in New Zealand, Australia & England.