Edward William Cooke, R.A.

Thomas Garle;
His sale, Christie's, London, 24 May 1862, lot 32 (bought Mrs A. D. Smith, 45 guineas);
J. S. Maas & Son, London, where bought by Sir David Scott in 1975 for £1,000.

Possibly London, British Institution, 1839;
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Sunshine and Shadow – The David Scott Collection of Victorian Paintings, 1991, no. 3.

John Munday, E. W. Cooke, 1811-1880, 1996, p. 329;
Sotheby's, Pictures from the Collection of Sir David and Lady Scott, 2008, pp. 36-39.

STRUCTURE The panel is sound. PAINT SURFACE Scattered craquelure to the sky area of the window. Otherwise in good condition. ULTRAVIOLET UV light reveals infilling to aforementioned craquelure and scattered spots elsewhere to objects in the foreground. FRAME Held in a decorative gilded composite frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

'Anything to do with Rembrandt has an immediate attraction for me and this delightful little picture by E.W. Cooke has therefore more than its painterly excellence to please me. I had a mill expert here once who explained all the various gadgets depicted. And I love to think that the canal in the distance is one of those figuring in so many of Rembrandt's incomparable drawings.'  Sir David Scott.

Edward William Cooke exhibited a set of four paintings showing the historic mill at Koukerke, which was supposed to be where Rembrandt's father had his business, as a series at the British Institution in 1839. If the present picture is not one of the exhibited works, it certainly seems likely to be one of the group of related sketches and more finished paintings of the mill which the artist made the previous year. On 12 March 1838 he wrote in his diary that he had begun an 'interior of Rembrandt's Mill on panel'. As he was then staying at William Wells' open house for artists, Redleaf, near Penshurst in Sussex, and – assuming that it is the one referred to in the diary entry – it was presumably made on the basis of drawings done in the late summer or autumn of 1837, when Cooke was in The Netherlands. The antiquarian interest that he had in the place is demonstrated by the autograph inscription explaining the subject that was attached to the back of the panel in 1843, presumably on the occasion of its sale; 'Rembrandt's Mill was erected in the year 1593, as a magazine for powder - on the banks of the "Old Rhijn" at Koukert, near Leyden. It was soon after converted into a mill, and at the time of Rembrandt's birth in 1606 was in possession of his his father Hermann Gerritz van Rhijn, from which period it has been constantly employed for the purpose of a corn mill. E.W.C. 1843'

Cooke has a great fascination for Holland, perhaps originating in the sight of Dutch shipping on the Thames which he had seen as a child. In his early years, he looked for opportunities to study Dutch art of the seventeenth century, so the influence of Ruysdael, Van Goyen and Van de Velde is strongly felt in his own landscape and figurative art. A particular taste for works done loosely in the style of the Dutch masters had established itself earlier in the century and was led by Clarkson Stanfield and Augustus Wall Callcott. It was Cooke's intention, however, to build on this tradition but also to refresh it by careful observation of people and places in contemporary Holland, made directly from life. He first visited the country in 1837, sketching coastal and marine subjects and writing diary accounts of all that he saw. The Dutch subjects that he exhibited at the British Institution were enthusiastically received from the time of their first display in 1838. The placing of the set of four related views of the mill at Koukerke at the British Institution the following year was clearly intended to establish his reputation as an artist of Dutch antiquarian subjects, and seems to have been a professional success. One of these was bought by William Wells, while two others entered the collection of Thomas Baring. According to John Munday, there were as many as a dozen related sketches of the mill, showing its interiors and the machinery that was used, made at the same time.

In 1849 John Burnet in his book Rembrandt and his Works included two engraved plates after drawings by Cooke of the mill, and also a letter from the artist which describes an interior view of it which must be similar to the present: 'My dear Sir, I send you another sketch of the mill; the pictures, including the doorzigte, or view out of the window, I painted on the spot, and that picture is now in the collection of the King of Holland'. (John Munday, E. W. Cooke, 1811-1880, p. 105). The mill has traditionally been identified as the one between the villages of Laydordorp and Koukergen where Rembrandt's father had worked and lived on the basis of an apparent likeness of the building and that shown in Rembrandt's 1641 etching The Windmill.

The building shows signs of long use and wear, in for example the hollowed step at the head of the wooden ladder that gives access to the upper floor, where the planks that form the rest of the platform seem to have worn away completely. The lower hinge of the wooden door is broken, so that the door hangs at a crazy angle. Thus Cooke mixes an evident fondness for the timeworn appearance of the place with a genuine interest in how it works. At the same time, the painting is a deliberate tribute to the great artist who it was supposed had once lived there, and in its sombre but rich colouring and manipulation of flow of light is in some sense indebted to Rembrandt's own style of painting.