Cooke was born in Islington, London in 1927 and lived with her family above her father’s hardware store in Lewisham. She attended Blackheath high school before studying illustration and textile design at Central School of Art and Design from 1943 to 1945 and the pottery at Camberwell School of Art and Sculpture at Goldsmiths’ College from 1945 to 1948. She subsequently set up a pottery studio in East Sussex. In April 1953 she met fellow artist John Bratby, marrying him shortly afterwards. Finding that he disapproved of her being a potter she accepted a place at the Royal College in 1953 to study painting.
In 1960 Jean and her husband moved into a large Edwardian house at 7 Hardy Road, Blackheath. Jean Cooke and John Bratby’s marriage wasn’t to be a happy one. At Bratby’s insistence, Cooke was only permitted to work between nine and midday, initially in a room where the ceiling was collapsing. Bratby would often forbid Cooke to leave the house, subsequently views of the street and the large garden became recurring subjects in her work. After the couple separated Cooke took great joy in letting the garden become wild, she described her freer approach as ‘ungardening’.
The overgrown state of the garden at Hardy Road is clear in this painting. A filigree of trees, magnolia blossom and bolting saplings, prevents any long vistas to be viewed withing the garden and confines the imagery to a shallow high wall of vegetation. Despite the restricted view the painting is vivid and full of life.
