Chilmark Pond", Martha's Vineyard Plein Air Coastal Island Pastel Landscape by Anne F. Cook

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"Chilmark Pond", Martha's Vineyard Plein Air Coastal Island Pastel Landscape by Anne F. Cook

A lovely plein air pastel landscape … more "Chilmark Pond", Martha's Vineyard Plein Air Coastal Island Pastel Landscape by Anne F. Cook

A lovely plein air pastel landscape capturing the natural beauty of New England's coastal island sunset views, by Martha's Vineyard artist Anne F. Cook (American, b.1962). This 1995 pastel, titled "Chilmark Pond", transports the viewer to the beautiful island of Martha's Vineyard, to bask in the soft light of dusk as the sun sets over the view of the island's coastal ponds.

Signed and dated "Cook 1995" lower right.
Titled "Chilmark Pond" lower left. Photo of title has been slightly enhanced to appear more legible.
Displayed in a decorative black and gilt-toned frame, with tan mat.
Image size: 18.5"H x 24.5"W.
Framed size: 26.25"H x 32.25"W x 1"D.


Anne Cook is a Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts based artist who has been working with pastels for over 40 years. Her aunt, Anne McGhee, gave Ms. Cook her first set. Ms. McGhee has been an inspiration to Ms. Cook, along with many other artistic family members. Her great grandfather was the impressionist artist John Folinsbee, and his apprentice, Peter Geoffrey Cook, who married Mr. Folinsbee’s daughter, was her grandfather.

“Art is something that’s in the lifeblood of the family,” Ms. Cook said. Ms. Cook said she has known she wanted to be an artist since childhood. To her it is a calling rekindled by her move back to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard. “I have this mystical connection to the Island,” she said. “I am in a place that means something to me again.”

Ms. Cook was born and raised on the Vineyard and has summered on the Island ever since. She decided to move back to Chilmark in recent years, where her family has owned a home for generations. “The colors last fall were uncharacteristically very intense. I just went out and started doing a series of work, not knowing when I was going to show it,” she recalled.

The series became a group of pastels and oils, each capturing different Vineyard scenes during that time of year. A proponent of full immersion, Ms. Cook did most of the pieces en plein air. For her, a painting being “pretty” is secondary. She would rather feel the wind as it whips across the cypress trees along the marshes than try to recreate it in a studio.
“Getting out there and fighting the elements and grabbing the landscape is all part of the thing,” she said. She calls it the “plein air experience.”
Ms. Cook’s aunt, Anne McGhee, for whom she is named, is a well-known Vineyard painter who is currently a member of the Fenway Studio artists in Boston. Her great-grandfather, John Folinsbee, was a celebrated impressionist artist and one of the core painters of the New Hope School of landscape painters. Ms. Cook’s grandfather, Peter Cook, was also an artist who was friends with Thomas Hart Benton.

In 2004, the Newman Galleries in Philadelphia hosted a show called The Legacy of John Folinsbee, in which Ms. Cook’s work was featured.

“He died when I was 14,” Ms. Cook said of her great-grandfather. “I had to get to know him through his work. It’s almost like his spirit got into me.”


Ms. Cook has certainly inherited both her ancestors’ talent and passion for painting. She had a successful 20-year career as an artist — showing here at the Field Gallery, Etherington Fine Art, the Gay Head Gallery (now known as the Sargent Gallery) and elsewhere. less