LONDON.- The Fine Art Society is presenting Lasting Impressions, an exhibition of 50 works – largely prints – curated by Director, Gordon Cooke. After twenty years at The Fine Art Society and over forty years in the business, Cooke will retire at the end of the year and this is his final exhibition at the gallery.

The show features a number of works by James McNeill Whistler, Samuel Palmer and Walter Sickert, reflecting Cooke’s own interests as well as the gallery’s long history of exhibiting these artists. These include Whistler’s ‘Nocturne: Palaces’, one of his greatest Venice etchings, and Palmer’s ‘The Lonely Tower’, gifted by the artist to Frederic George Stephens, who was the first critic to write about Palmer’s Shoreham paintings in the catalogue of his memorial exhibition at The Fine Art Society in 1881. The show also presents a unique etching by Whistler’s pupil Sickert, ‘Venice, The Horses of St Mark’s’.

With a group of three Ben Nicholson prints: ‘Profile’ (1933), ‘I.C.I Shed’ (1948) and ‘Tree, Column and Moon’ (1967), the exhibition reflects the three distinct phases of Nicholson’s career as a printmaker. It also features five works by Graham Sutherland including the astonishing early drawing ‘Hop Fields’ (c.1925), created while he was still a student at Goldsmiths’ College.

A number of further works in the exhibition mirror Cooke’s own enthusiasms: ‘The Chamber Idyll’ (1831) by Edward Calvert, a small masterpiece; two prints by sculptor Geoffrey Clarke, an artist that Cooke has championed; and lithographs by John Copley and Ethel Gabain, whose estates Cooke has represented for over thirty years. Peter Lanyon and Kenneth Martin – wonderfully talented printmakers working in the 1950s – and William Larkins, the subject of Cooke’s first exhibition in 1978, are also included.

There is a suite of lithographs by Harry Holland, ‘Homage to Electricity’, commissioned by Garton & Cooke in 1980, and etchings by Robin Tanner, a Goldsmiths’ artist from whom Cooke learned a great deal in his early career. Cooke has included works by Norman Ackroyd from the 1980s, by Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, CRW Nevinson and Paul Nash.

After graduating from Leeds University with a BA in Fine Art, Cooke’s career started in 1976 with a job in a gallery selling 19th & 20th century British prints. He became a partner in the gallery, Garton & Cooke, and founded The London Original Print Fair in 1985. Gordon then worked as a private dealer from 1988-1997 and, in 1993, presented a show of early etchings by Graham Sutherland at The Fine Art Society.

After further shows of Whistler, American Prints, The Great British Print Show and William Scott, Cooke was appointed a director of the company in 1997. During twenty years at The Fine Art Society, Gordon Cooke has organised more than 80 exhibitions including five Whistler exhibitions and three Palmer shows. He has sold upwards of 200 Palmers, 350 Whistlers and 500 Sickerts.