Barry Cryer chooses ‘Ladies Night’ by Beryl Cook:
‘Beryl Cook based her paintings on observations of patrons’ behaviour in her local pub made as she sat observing them with her husband.
‘The occupants of her pictures are often somewhat large, to put it delicately, and represent a coming together of different strands of society.
‘Ladies Night shows a female audience reacting mirthfully to a male stripper. Like all her work, it displays a ripe sense of humour, which is what attracted me to it. No pretension, just joyful observation.’
Writer, comedian and actor Barry Cryer is a panellist on Radio 4’s comedy programme ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue;, which has been running since 1972.
John McEwen on ‘Ladies Night’ by Beryl Cook:
The late John Craxton RA would have rejoiced at Barry Cryer’s choice of Beryl Cook. He regarded her as the Hogarth of our English time and persistently nominated her for Royal Academy membership, to no avail.
She received an OBE, her pictures are in public collections in Plymouth, Bristol and Glasgow and were chosen for a set of Royal Mail stamps, but the academicians and the British art world looked down their noses at her pictures – perhaps because their flamboyant colour and shrewd observations of the human comedy were by a self-taught outsider.
The third of four sisters, she was born Beryl Lansley in Egham, Surrey. Her parents separated when she was very young, so she was raised in a female household in Reading.
She showed no artistic inclination as a child and left school at 14. After various jobs, including a summer season as a chorus girl, which taught her that she disliked the limelight, she married her childhood sweetheart, John Cook. They were briefly pub landlords before spending a decade in Southern Rhodesia.
On their return, they went to Looe and then Plymouth, where they had a large guesthouse on the Hoe. She began to paint for fun, among her influences Edward Burra and Stanley Spencer. Her first exhibition came through one of her paying guests.
Cook liked to sit in pubs and secretly draw the clientele on small cards. Of this picture, she wrote: ‘I’m rather pleased with the expression on the face of the lady in black – exactly right I feel – and I tried to get in all the hands extended towards him.’
My Favourite Painting: Lulu
Lulu chooses her favourite painting for Country Life.
My favourite painting: Peter May
'Vividly coloured sailing boats in a harbour, which I gazed at for hours'
Credit: The Kiss - Gustav Klimt
My favourite painting: Danielle Steel
Danielle Steel, the world's top-selling fiction writer, admits that 'Klimt stole my heart' with this wonderful work.
My favourite painting: David Starkey
David Starkey shares the one painting he would own, if he could
My favourite painting: Jacqueline Wilson
'I looked at this painting and decided to write about a Victorian circus girl one day'
My favourite painting: Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane chooses his favourite painting for Country Life.
My favourite painting: Nicola Shulman
Nicola Shulman chooses her favourite painting for Country Life.
My favourite painting: Patrick Gale
Patrick Gale chooses his favourite painting for Country Life.
My Favourite Painting: John Taylor
John Taylor chooses his favourite painting for Country Life.
-
'As a child I wanted to snuggle up with the dogs and be part of it': Alexia Robinson chooses her favourite paintingAlexia Robinson, founder of Love British Food, chooses an Edwin Landseer classic.
-
The Pre-Raphaelite painter who swapped 'willowy, nubile women' for stained glass — and created some of the best examples in BritainThe painter Edward Burne-Jones turned from paint to glass for much of his career. James Hughes, director of the Victorian Society, chooses a glass masterpiece by Burne-Jones as his favourite 'painting'.
-
'I can’t look away. I’m captivated': The painter who takes years over each portrait, with the only guarantee being that it won't look like the subjectFor Country Life's My Favourite Painting slot, the writer Emily Howes chooses a work by a daring and challenging artist: Frank Auerbach.
-
My Favourite Painting: Rob HouchenThe actor Rob Houchen chooses a bold and challenging Egon Schiele work.
-
My Favourite Painting: Jeremy Clarkson'That's why this is my favourite painting. Because it invites you to imagine'
-
The chair of the National Gallery names his favourite from among the 2,300 masterpieces — and it will come as a bit of a shockAs the National Gallery turns 200, the chair of its board of trustees, John Booth, chooses his favourite painting.
-
'A wonderful reminder of what the countryside could and should be': The 200-year-old watercolour of a world fast disappearingChristopher Price of the Rare Breed Survival Trust on the bucolic beauty of The Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer, which he nominates as his favourite painting.
-
My favourite painting: Andrew Graham-Dixon'Lesson Number One: it’s the pictures that baffle and tantalise you that stay in the mind forever .'
