A WOMAN'S WORTH

“Gentle reader, do you know the eager, painful joy of mountain exploration—the treading of forests…the crashing and crawling through the thickets of stunted firs and spruces… claw[ing] the clothing of the alpine aspirant; the ascending of the beds of mountainbrooks to find some waterfall worthy of renown…hidden in deep mountain basin and visited only, and not reported on, by logger and trapper.”

- Jennifer Krieger

Such were the words of Edith Walker Cook (1839-1902) in A New England Pilgrimage, published in 1885. She implies that the “logger and trapper” had witnessed natural wonders, but she, the artist-explorer, unlocked and reported them. Cook was a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club familiar with the challenges of scrambling through wild scenery. She trained under landscapists Jervis McEntee and Worthington Whittredge. She was also a poet and a writer.

Her Autumn Landscape, 1865, reflects views from her hikes, where a woodland ramble opens to a pastoral clearing. The roseate sky harmonizes with the auburn trees, evoking emotion and hinting toward the subjectivity of the burgeoning Barbizon influence. Cook painted the ominous coastal work, New Jersey Shoreline, in 1863. She carefully observes nimbostratus cloud structure and contrasting eerie brightness of the bluffs and crested waves below. Cook may have read Jasper Francis Cropsey’s essay, Up Among the Clouds, or Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos series, but clearly she perceived meteorological nuance and stood on trend with better credited colleagues who painted nature with the same scientific awareness.

Cook was part of a network of other artists, writers and mountaineers, which included Susie M. Barstow. Barstow hiked and painted with Cook as a fellow member of the Appalachian Mountain Club. They exhibited together at an 1871 exhibition of the Ladies’ Art Association at Clinton Hall in Manhattan.