RARE “Art Critic\" Clarence Cook Hand Written Letter Dated 1879 For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! "Art Critic" Clarence Cook Hand Written 2 Page Letter Dated 1879.  

ES-3031D

Clarence Chatham Cook (September 8,

1828 – June 2, 1900) was a 19th-century American author and art critic. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts,

Cook graduated from Harvard in 1849 and

worked as a teacher. Between 1863 and 1869, Cook wrote a series of articles

about American art for The New York Tribune. In

1869, he moved to France and was the Parisian correspondent for The New York

Tribune until the onset of the Franco-Prussian War. Cook

was known for his expertise in archeology and antiquities and was instrumental

in the criticism of the collection of General di Cesnola. In the

mid-1850s Cook began to read works by John Ruskin and associated with a group of American

artists, writers, and architects who followed Ruskin's thinking. Through this

group he became aware of the British Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In 1863, with Clarence King and John William Hill he helped to found the Society for

the Advancement of Truth in Art, an American group, similar to the

Pre-Raphaelites, who published a journal called The New Path. In

1869 Cook wrote A Description of the New York Central Park. In

1877, articles on home furnishings that Cook had written for Scribner's Monthly were

published as a book entitled The House Beautiful. In 1879, Cook

served as editor for Wilhelm Lübke's History of Art. Cook died at his

home in Fishkill Landing, New

York, from complications of Bright's Disease. He was 71.