![\"Beryl](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_unnamed-71.jpg\")
Artist Beryl in her studio with granddaughter Sophie (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\nNow 17 years after her death, Beryl Cook’s pictures of pub life are being appreciated by a younger audience and a new exhibition celebrating the artist will give her the acclaim she deservesArtist Beryl in her studio with granddaughter Sophie (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Her saucy postcard-style portraits of ordinary folk having a laugh made Beryl Cook a hit with the British public.<\/p>\n
A seaside landlady who took up painting in her 30s, the artist was a \u201cglamorous granny who loved a gin and tonic and a Silk Cut ciggie\u201d and captured her larger than life characters, basking in what she called \u201cthe joy in life\u201d.<\/p>\n
Whether they were necking a pint down the pub, winning at bingo, munching on a sausage sandwich, or mincing off to a hen party in a leopard print miniskirt \u2013 she painted a slice of British life, like a jolly modern Hogarth.<\/p>\n
It took a sniffy art establishment a long time to admit that Beryl\u2019s earthy style was far more nuanced than they ever gave her credit for. But now, 17 years after her death, a landmark new exhibition at The Box in Plymouth will celebrate 100 years of Beryl in her home city.<\/p>\n
![\"L,R](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1_wperry_cook_plymouth_07JPG.jpg\")
Beryl’s granddaughter Sophie, left, and daughter in law Teresa show off the family painting in the garden of their home in Plymouth(Image: wayne Perry)<\/p>\n
Born before her time, the late artist\u2019s long overdue revival sees her genius being appreciated by a whole new generation. \u201cI really feel like there\u2019s a resurgence of love for Grandma,\u201d says Beryl\u2019s granddaughter Sophie Cook, who runs the artist\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn exhibition in London last year brought a new, younger eye to her art.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: \u2018We drank to excess and had debauched sex parties \u2013 but one drug split the band\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cGrandma was celebrating the fuller figure right from the beginning. People\u2019s attitudes have changed now \u2013 but Grandma was already there doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n Beryl\u2019s daughter-in-law Teresa, who has been married to Beryl\u2019s carpenter son John for 55 years, reveals a more pragmatic reason behind her voluptuous figures.<\/p>\n \u201cShe didn’t like painting the background,\u201d explains Teresa, 74. \u201cBeryl wanted the big characters, so that she could spend her time enjoying painting them and not the background!\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps this straightforward approach to painting is what made execrable art critics like the late Brian Sewell sneer. But if he thought calling it \u201cvulgar\u201d was a criticism, he was wrong, because Beryl relished the vulgar and her characters\u2019 fleshy, wobbly bits.<\/p>\n Teresa also thinks critics didn\u2019t like her because she was funny. \u201cShe told me, \u2018They said \u2018I haven’t got a message,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n READ MORE: ‘I designed Princess Diana’s wedding dress – one problem nearly ruined it all’<\/a><\/p>\n Luckily, people have finally caught up with Beryl\u2019s message of diversity.<\/p>\n Famously very shy and private, the artist surrounded herself with flamboyant people. \u201cMany of her friends were gay,\u201d explains Teresa. \u201cShe was totally unprejudiced about everything \u2013 she never minded other people’s religions, politics, or wherever. She embraced it all. For her time, she was a free thinker.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite leaving school at 14, Beryl was also extremely well read. \u201cShe always read books about people’s lives. She was always observing people,\u201d adds Teresa.<\/p>\n A quick check on Beryl\u2019s Wikipedia page reveals her paintings are classed as \u201cnaive\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was nothing naive about Beryl,\u201d argues Teresa. \u201cYou could call her early paintings naive in the fact that they weren’t sophisticated, but never naive.\u201d<\/p>\n READ MORE: ‘I’m a chemist – Agatha Christie wrote one murder plot better than any other’<\/a><\/p>\n Quite the opposite, Beryl often painted the ordinary man or woman at their raucous best. And, a master of her art, Beryl\u2019s attention to detail captured all of humanity\u2019s tics, secret desires and regrets.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd lots of people smoking,\u201d pipes up Sophie. \u201cEven when Grandma was forced to give up smoking \u2013 she could hardly breathe because of her asthma \u2013 she always had a full ashtray of butts in her studio!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think it wasn\u2019t so much the smoking as the oil paints,\u201d contradicts Teresa. \u201cShe was breathing in those oil fumes every day for years.\u201d<\/p>\n A prolific painter, Beryl famously said how instead of doing housework, she would go and paint. \u201cShe\u2019d have breakfast, go to the shops for an hour, then come back and paint until lunchtime, then go up and paint until the light faded,\u201d continues her daughter-in-law.<\/p>\n READ MORE: \u2018I’m a shipwreck detective for treasure \u2013 there’s billions more gold down there\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cMost paintings would take her a week or two.\u201d Which explains why there are at least 500 Beryl Cook paintings out there.<\/p>\n When she found fame, they were snapped up by celebrities like Yoko Ono and Jackie Collins.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd more are still being discovered,\u201d adds Teresa. \u201cWhich is not easy because she never signed them, you see, she didn\u2019t feel like a real artist.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s quite a back catalogue for someone without any formal training. Born in Surrey in 1926, one of four sisters brought up by their mum, after their dad left, Beryl turned her hand to a variety of jobs in London including model and showgirl.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, she modelled knitting patterns,\u201d laughs Teresa. \u201cAnd it was her sister who was a trained dancer, which is how she got roped into that.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1948, she married her childhood friend John Cook, who served in the merchant navy, and their son John was born in 1950. She was briefly a pub landlady, but in 1956, the family moved to Southern Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe, and it was here that Beryl discovered her talent by accident.<\/p>\n READ MORE: ‘I found priceless treasure rummaging on UK riverbank – and there’s more out there’<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cJohn senior was a car salesman and his brother-in-law had moved out there,\u201d Teresa explains. \u201cOne day Beryl was keeping young John occupied by doing the same painting \u2013 but while her son didn’t do so well, she discovered she liked painting!<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, she didn’t like apartheid, so they came back to England, and her husband bought her an oil painting set.\u201d<\/p>\n After moving to Cornwall in 1965, Beryl started painting to cover her walls, then they bought a four-storey Georgian house on the Hooe, Plymouth, in 1968, and turned it into a guest house.<\/p>\n Art student Teresa met Beryl\u2019s son John in a pub in Plymouth, and he took her home. \u201cThere were all these paintings all over the walls. I said, \u2018Oh, wow.\u2019 And she asked, \u2018Do you like them?\u2019 I told her, \u2018Yeah, I do.\u2019 And we got on fine from then.\u201d<\/p>\n READ MORE: \u2018I caught British rock stars on film raw and up-close before they were famous\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n The seaside landlady kept a little room in the house where she did the ironing \u2013 and painted. \u201cThe place was stacked with paintings,\u201d says Teresa. \u201cShe would paint on anything, like driftwood and log boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n Teresa reminds Sophie: “Remember you used it as a toy box, didn’t you? And it had all these nudes dancing around it.\u201d<\/p>\n Beryl\u2019s granddaughter is now 41 and married with her own children in Cornwall, but she recalls spending wonderful weekends with her quirky and kind granny, having Sunday roasts and her \u201cwonderful lemon meringue pie\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cMy biggest memory is of her ice cream floats,\u201d recalls Sophie with a smile. \u201cShe liked cherry coke with a scoop of ice cream in it.\u201d<\/p>\n Aside from making Beryl the odd tenner when punters bought pictures she\u2019d hung in her friend\u2019s pub, the family made their money from paying guests.<\/p>\n \u201cThey had one place rented out below, one rented out above, and then they lived on the ground floor,\u201d recalls Teresa. \u201cThey had three bedrooms with sinks in the rooms where she did B&B in the summer.<\/p>\n \u201cShe purposely didn\u2019t have a guest lounge, so she didn\u2019t have to talk to them, and would leave their breakfast for them on a tray outside each room.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember she\u2019d never serve tomatoes next to the eggs \u2013 she didn’t like the colour combination!\u201d<\/p>\n Around this time, Teresa and John ran Elvira\u2019s Cafe in town, which also became the backdrop for some of Beryl\u2019s paintings<\/p>\n \u201cShe had this incredible photographic memory,\u201d recalls Teresa. \u201cAnd when she looked at you, it felt uncomfortable because she was really looking.\u201d<\/p>\n It was only a matter of time before Beryl\u2019s genius was discovered, and one day the late actress Joanna Tope stayed at their guest house and fell in love with the landlady\u2019s art.<\/p>\n \u201cJoanna knew Bernard Samuels, who ran the Plymouth Arts Centre, and she told him, \u2018Oh, you’ve got to come and see this.\u2019 Bernard had to come around three times to persuade Beryl to actually have an exhibition.\u201d<\/p>\n The exhibition was a sell-out and before long, Beryl became the toast of the town. She went national when a Sunday newspaper put her on their cover and she appeared on LWT\u2019s South Bank Show.<\/p>\n Worried people would be offended by her work, Beryl was tickled when she discovered the public loved her art.<\/p>\n \u201cShe received so much fan mail and it gave her an enormous boost,\u201d says Teresa. \u201cShe didn’t want fame, she wanted her paintings to be famous. And the only reason she did TV was for her fans. She was terribly nervous over all that sort of thing and used to have a little drink beforehand!\u201d<\/p>\n In 1995 Beryl was awarded an OBE, which she was too shy to collect, but the fame and fortune that came with it meant she could lavish money on her most precious thing \u2013 her family. \u201cShe was very generous with us,\u201d agrees Teresa.<\/p>\n Happily, the artist, who was by then in her late 50s, got to enjoy some of the rewards. \u201cShe treated herself by going to the US on Concorde and then they came back on the QE2 \u2013 she loved that,\u201d says Teresa.<\/p>\n After suffering from cancer, Beryl died aged 81, in 2008. \u201cThey say it was cancer, but she gave up when she couldn\u2019t paint any more,\u201d reveals Teresa.<\/p>\n \u201cShe painted her last artwork Tommy Dancing in 2008, so she really did paint up until her last, but she was in terrible pain from sitting with her legs crossed at her easel for hours and leaning forward to paint.\u201d<\/p>\n John senior enjoyed several more years before he passed away aged 88, in 2014.<\/p>\n Beryl always said family was \u201cthe most important thing in my life, not my painting.\u201d<\/p>\n But they love her painting – and so, now, does the art world<\/a>. \u201cHer art has provided for us all,\u201d says Sophie. \u201cAnd we\u2019re so grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 The Beryl Cook exhibition will be The Box, Plymouth, from January 24, 2026 at www.theboxplymouth.com<\/p>\n Ann Summers Summer Brights collection<\/p>\n This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more<\/a> Varies<\/p>\n Ann Summers<\/p>\n![\"Curvy](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1_Beryl-Cook-Courtesy-of-wwwourberylcookcom-John-Cook-2025.jpg\")
Curvy ladies on a night out in Beryl’s painting of the Lockyer Tavern (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)<\/p>\n![\"Bingo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_e-Art-Fund-Courtesy-of-wwwourberylcookcom-John-Cook-2025.jpg\")
Bingo by Beryl Cook (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)![\"Beach](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_Beryl-Cook-Courtesy-of-wwwourberylcookcom-John-Cook-2025.jpg\")
Beach at Looe by Beryl Cook (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)<\/p>\n![\"Beryl](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_unnamed-70.jpg\")
Beryl taking a break on the sofa tucking into a box of chocolates (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n![\"Early](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_unnamed-73.jpg\")
Early glamour photo of Beryl from her days of modelling for knitting patterns (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n![\"Young](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_unnamed-74.jpg\")
Young John with his mum Beryl in the 1950s (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com . \u00a9 John Cook 2025)(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n![\"Beryl's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_wperry_cook_plymouth_14JPG.jpg\")
Beryl’s granddaughter Sophie holds one of her granny’s paintings at the family home in Plymouth(Image: wayne Perry)<\/p>\n![\"Teresa](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_wperry_cook_plymouth_12JPG.jpg\")
Beryl’s daughter in law Teresa holds one of the artist’s portraits of her at the family home in Plymouth(Image: wayne Perry)<\/p>\n![\"Beryl](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_Elviras-cafe.jpg\")
In Beryl’s Elvira’s Cafe, Teresa is serving a slice of cake to a handsome marine (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n![\"Beryl](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_Four-Hungrey-Cats.jpg\")
One of the family’s favourites \u2013 Beryl’s Four Hungry Cats (Image courtesy of www.ourberylcook.com \u00a9 John Cook 2025)(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n![\"Ann](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_ann-summers.jpg\")
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