Showing posts with label tony rafty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tony rafty. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Noel Cook Part Two

 
Noel Cook gets caricatured by Tony Rafty circa late 40's.
 
Today is the 116th anniversary of the birth of cartoonist/illustrator Noel Cook. On the Pikitia Press tumblr I'll be posting a series of galleries of Cook's work over the next couple days.

New Zealand Author Witi Ihimaera discovered Cook's work in England during the early seventies, he shared the following recollections:

     I well remember walking through Chelsea, I think it was, and seeing in the front window of an art gallery a painting of a large tekoteko figure. The painting, in blue, red and black was so arresting - and posed in such a dramatic way, the figure almost tearing itself apart - that I went in and bought it. I can't remember how much it cost, but as I was on my honeymoon with Jane and we were on a working holiday, you'll appreciate that it wasn't a purchase to be done lightly! Subsequently I met Noel Cook and his wife - he may have been in the gallery at the time I bought the painting - but I know Jane and I went to another showing of his and also to dinner with him and London friends. He was a friendly generous man to a young Maori boy - as I was then - and we corresponded for a while, somewhere I may have those letters but it would take ages to find them.
     I still have the painting. It's on the wall in my music room. Uncannily, Alan Duff's first edition of his book Once Were Warriors has a similarly posed tekoteko on its cover. Mine is the better version.

  Catalogue from Noel Cook Exhibition
Images © 2013 Estate of Noel Cook

Special thanks to Dylan Horrocks, Witi Ihimaera, Tim Bollinger, Geoff Harrison, Darren Schroeder, Peter Cook and Jonquil Cook.