Details

Object type

painting

Title

By the Clyde

Artist/Maker

Beryl Cook artist

Culture/School

English

Place Associated

Scotland, Glasgow, River Clyde (place depicted)

Date

1992

Materials

oil on board

Dimensions

framed: 980 mm x 698 mm x 20 mm;unframed: 879 mm x 596 mm

Description

Lady wearing leopard skin coat and carrying a white plastic bag is walking her dog along the river Clyde in Glasgow. Behind her is a stone bridge with red double-decker displaying advertisement for Dunkin’ Donoughts. Below the bridge to right is a boulder with faint vulgar graffiti saying ‘Wogs Out’. Signed “B.Cook” at lower right.

Beryl Cook painted By the Clyde on commission for Gallery of Modern Art collection. It does not depict any particular, existing scenery in Glasgow, but is rather a composite picture. She said about this painting: ‘I draw my pictures first and have to spend some considerable time forming a pattern satisfactory to myself before I can go on to paint – the real pleasure. I liked this view of the bridge and the bus, and added a girl I had seen at Glasgow Railway Station.’

Beryl Cook had become one of the best commentators on contemporary life. She did it without cynicism, but with a warmth and humanity that is combined with a sharpness of observation and wit, which ensures there is no sentimentality. She always included in her pictures what she felt needed to be there. Same as she could not resist painting the leopard skin coat she saw on a lady in Central Station, she could not resist including a boulder with the graffiti ‘Wogs Out’. Regarding the graffiti, former director of Glasgow Museums and a good friend of Beryl, Julian Spalding recalled: ‘Her husband John said she could not possibly put that in because the City Council would not like it. I said it was up to her – she was the artist. Art is not reality; it is like a magical sphere in which the artist can conjure up the reflections of anything they like in the world. Within this sphere, the artist has the freedom of a dictator. Art is a legitimate form of dictatorship within democracy. Only dictators cannot accept the dictatorship of art. Beryl Cook did put in the graffiti, but faintly – as if the Council had tried but not quite managed to scrub it out.’

Credit Line/Donor

Purchased from Beryl Cook, 1993

ID Number

3512

Location

In storage