William Edwards Cook - Later Life

Later Life

In his later life, as a friend of Stein's once noted, Cook was primarily known as "the occupant of a house built by Le Corbusier." Already dismayed in the 1930s by his continuing lack of success as an artist, he apparently gave up painting, moved temporarily in Rome, and then settled with his wife in 1936 in Palma de Majorca, in the Balearic Islands. Majorca had by then become an affordable refuge for expatriate artists and writers, most notably Robert Graves. In their declining years, both William and Jeanne Cook turned to painting, and both became active participants in the island's artistic community. They spent their remaining years in the El Terreno district of Palma de Majorca, and are buried in above ground vaults in a small religious cemetery in the nearby district of Genova.