SAMUEL COOK, ARTIST. 403 
carefully looked at and admired his sketches, and imperceptibly 
was led to sketch very much after Bennett’s manner. One fine 
sketch in particular (now in the possession of Mr. Mortimer Collier, 
at Horrabridge) which Cook made on this occasion might almost 
be mistaken for a Bennett. Cook knew his strength, and his 
weakness ; in sea-coast subjects no one could beat him, whilst in 
luxuriant foliage and rough herbage he saw he could learn from 
another. Bennett, on the other hand, who was in the habit of 
visiting Hastings annually, and sketching there, told me he should 
never think of exhibiting a sea-coast subject again, after he had 
once seen what Cook was able to do; and this was when Bennett 
received £300 for a single drawing of rough sca. Some years after, 
when Bennett was on a visit to me at’ Plymouth, the year after 
Cook’s death, I took him to see a small coast drawing by Cook, at 
the house of Cook’s widow. Bennett was so delighted with it that 
he desired me to tell Mrs. Cook he could give or get for it (I forget 
which) £100. This was a drawing Cook had made recently before 
his last illness, and for which he was to have received £10! 
This trip to Windsor Forest did Cook great good as a land- 
scape painter. He had not previously seen any first-class artist at 
work, and it gave him new ideas for future pictures. Moreover, 
it is very certain that the time and attention he had given to 
studies of the sea and coast had precluded him, up to this period, 
from sufficient study of foliage, a study which as an amateur I 
may venture to say is sui generis. It is a well-known anecdote of 
a conceited and ignorant pupil that, coming to an artist for lessons, 
he stated that he could do everything but trees. Trees have 
puzzled some of the greatest artists, and perhaps it was not until 
Harding, that prince of drawing-masters, published a series of 
works showing how trees and foliage might be expressed by a 
method and system peculiarly his own, that such subjects were 
properly understood. 
Subsequent to this visit to Windsor Forest Cook made some 
remarkably fine drawings, in which the anatomy of trees, and the 
effect of wind on foliage, were prominent features; and these 
drawings contained a quality which even Bennett would have 
envied, for they were invariably impressed with a poetic feeling. 
I have in my mind especially a grand landscape, quite the most 
important in size, nearly four feet long, and the most artistic 
landscape Cook ever painted, representing the Dolwyddelan Valley 
VOL. VII. 2D 
