Authenticating a Nelson Cook Portrait

 As indicated, at the time of the sale, not only was the portrait simply “attributed to Nelson Cook,” the sitter was unknown by Doyle, and the painting was put on the auction block as an unidentified “Portrait of a Legislator.”  Doyle was not totally convinced the portrait was done by Cook despite an inscription on the front bottom left that reads “N. Cook, Painter 1834.” Admittedly, the signature was very difficult to see, even though Doyle had determined the inscription had been “strengthened” by someone at some point. But it was a Cook signature all the same. Or was it? (See detail to the right).

Doyle is a highly-respected, 60-year-old auction house, and yet their Director of American Art had misgivings about naming Cook as the definite painter of “The Legislator.”  This placed the Cook site caretakers in a quandary. Adding to this quandary, was another factor. Coincidentally, the Curator of the Saratoga Springs History Museum (the owner of several native-son Nelson Cook portraits) was in NYC just prior to Doyle’s auction and stopped by the auction house to have a first-hand look at the painting. In his judgment the painting was a “genuine” Nelson Cook. Additionally, the portrait’s new owner, who in 2021 had acquired two authenticated Cooks, did a careful examination of his new purchase, and he too deemed it to be an “1834 Cook.” Everything taken together, especially the “strengthened” signature, which could have been added nefariously at some later time, the caretakers of this site were hesitant to give the portrait more than an 80% certainty that it was truly painted by Cook. Our quandary persisted: Should we post the painting to the Cook site with the 80% caveat, or should we work with the new owner and jointly do some more research to raise the caretakers’ confidence level? We chose the latter option.

First, we took into account what we knew about Cook’s career. Cook was certainly painting in 1834, which would have been during his early Canada years. And there was a red curtain in the background, and a document held by the sitter in the foreground, two compositional elements Cook was known to employ both in Canada and later during his more mature period in New York state. Further, rather than use his full name, Cook was known to have signed a number of his paintings simply as “N. Cook,” as appeared on “The Legislator.” And the “N” in the difficult-to-read signature on the Doyle painting appeared to be the same distinctive “N” Cook had used on many of his other portraits. What’s more, although the signature had been strengthened, only a few of the letters were overpainted.  

But despite all these true-to-form Cook characteristics, the artistic craftsmanship displayed by the painting did not totally ring true as Cook’s -- at least not Cook’s style in 1834. Cook’s sitters at that time tended to be rendered as flat, two-dimensional figures. In 1834 Cook’s sitters were absent the more modeled facial contours and expressive features Cook would later develop. But “The Legislator” was different. The artist had made a concerted effort to model the sitter’s face with contrasting shades of light and dark, which resulted in more natural, less opaque facial features. So much so that the 1834 rendering had more in common with Cook’s style three years hence than it did with the artist’s output during the previous two years. This observation was especially borne out by Cook’s most famous sitter to date, his 1837 portrait of Sir Francis Bond Head, which is shown to the right. It was then that we realized “The Legislator” might very well be a Cook, who intentionally had used “The Legislator” portrait as a transitional bridge between the artist’s primitive style of the early 1830s and his more polished compositions in the latter part of the decade. 

Meanwhile, the portrait’s new owner had embarked on a dual campaign to identify his unknown sitter and to build a stronger case authenticating Cook as the undisputed painter. Soon after his quest began in search of the sitter’s name, an email to the Library and Archives Canada hit pay dirt. The Canadian Archives quickly identified the sitter as Lord Henry Brougham, and the painting’s owner contacted the Cook site caretakers with this breakthrough bit of news. It was only then that the caretakers could prepare an in-depth profile of Lord Brougham’s impressive career. But in the process of doing so, an equally intriguing story emerged as to how the 1834 Canadian portrait of Lord Brougham came to be in the first place. 

In 1821 English artist James Lonsdale (1777-1839) painted an oil portrait of Henry Brougham, who, following his defense of Queen Caroline in Parliament the year before, was now one of the most popular and most famous men in all of Britain. (See Lonsdale’s portrait to the right, above.) Lonsdale was a very prolific artist, who was heavily influenced by two, more famous English painters, Thomas Lawrence and George Romney. But Lonsdale certainly held his own by painting many English aristocrats and statemen, and even included Nicholas I of Russian among his many prominent sitters. In 1873 Lonsdale’s son donated Lord Brougham’s portrait to the National Portrait Gallery in London. However, the painting given to the Gallery was not Lonsdale’s original portrait of Lord Brougham. Rather, it was a “replica” done by James Lonsdale himself, since the original was proudly held by Brougham at his Brougham Hall estate. Artists painting secondary replicas was not an uncommon practice in the 19th century art world, and nor was it uncommon for oil paintings to be later reproduced by engravers of the day. Due to Brougham’s notoriety, many engravers did just that with Lonsdale’s portrait. And one engraving in particular done by W.O. Knight was especially popular and was published throughout Europe and in the United States and Canada. (See Knight’s engraving of Lord Brougham to the right.)

The grayscale engraving in particular gave us all immediate pause! With the exception of the text at the bottom of Knight’s print, it was absolutely identical to the 1834 color oil painting shown to the right that Doyle had sold at auction.

So, although we now knew the sequence of events from Lonsdale’s original 1821 oil painting to Knight’s intermediate engraving to Doyle’s 1834 portrait, was there anything that stood out to us to further authenticate Cook as the painter of colorized print? It wasn’t long before the new owner of Lord Brougham’s 1834 portrait saw it, and he soon contacted us with his finding. He sent along Cook’s 1838 portrait of Tirzah Hopkins Patrick (shown to the right) and drew our attention to the green-curtain-and-column-border element to Tirzah’s left.  

And then we saw it, too! Except for the color, the curtain and column pairing was nearly identical to the same element in the Doyle 1834 portrait. But the new owner of the Brougham painting took it a step further. He flipped the Brougham portrait and superimposed it on Tirzah’s portrait. And there it was – as shown to the right, the contours of the two curtains were an absolutely perfect match! Not only had Cook colorized a copy W.O. Knight’s engraving in 1834, four years later Cook borrowed a compositional element from Knight’s print and incorporated into Tirzah’s portrait. Everything considered, the caretakers of the Nelson Cook site were now convinced another authentic Cook portrait had been found.