The work of Olive Cook (1912 – 2002) features prominently in our exhibition Fry’s Popular Delights, opening this month at the Gallery. Olive grew up in Cambridge, and was educated at the Perse school and Newnham College. After graduating she worked at Chatto & Windus publishers and the National Gallery, going on to work with Kenneth Clark managing the wartime storage of the collections in Wales. With her husband Edwin Smith, she produced a seminal sequence of books capturing the essence of English architecture and rural life.
While not widely recognised as an artist in her own right, Olive was irrepressibly creative, as well as being one of those people who stimulated creativity around her. As a friend of Edward Bawden and the remaining Bardfield artists, she was instrumental in helping set up the Gallery in 1985.
Olive painted in a bold, almost expressionist style. She also turned her hand to collage, the results of which reflect her eclectic taste for the decorative, the popular and the eccentric. Olive would have found much to enjoy in this season’s exhibitions at the gallery.
The picture is on display in the exhibition Fry’s Popular Delights curated by Mark Hearld and Colin Wilkin in the Main Gallery. For more collages, visit Papercuts: 30 Years of Collage & Illustration by Michelle Thompson in the Gibson Room. Both exhibitions open on Sunday 5th April, 2026.