Formative Years
Cook grew up in the small community of Independence, Iowa, in the northeast section of the state. In the early 1890s, it was nationally known as a horseracing center, a distinction that earned it the popular name of the Lexington of the North. The son of an Iowa lawyer who also owned a number of farms, Cook left home to study at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1898 and then, shortly after that, at the National Academy of Design in New York. As was customary among aspiring artists, he then moved on to Paris in 1903, where he was a student of animal painter Jean-Paul Laurens and the famous (if much maligned) French academic master, the aging Adolphe-William Bouguereau, at the Académie Julian.
Read more about this topic: William Edwards Cook
Famous quotes related to formative years:
“The social forces that operate on a family during the daughter’s formative years continue to shape her experience. Thus the families, schools, and jobs that involve poor women are likely to be very hierarchically arranged, demanding conformity, passivity, and obedience—all unsupportive of continued intellectual growth.”
—Mary Field Belenky (20th century)