William Delafield Cook

William Delafield Cook AM (1936–2015) was an Australian artist who was known for his photorealistic landscapes. He won a number of awards, including the Order of Australia.

Early life Delafield Cook was born in Melbourne, Australia on 28 February 1936. His grandfather, who was also named William Delafield Cook, was also a painter and had links to the Heidelberg School of Australian painting.

In 1962 he married 1962 Sally Patricia Bovington, with whom he had two daughters, and a son, the artist Jonathan Delafield Cook.

Later life, death Delafield Cook died after a brief illness in London on 29 March 2015, where he had been preparing for an exhibition; he was aged 79.

Reception Critic John McDonald, in his Art and Australia review of Deborah Hart's monograph on the artist, remarks on:...the central dilemma of Cook’s art: that a painter who has the highest aspirations for his work should strive to make his pictures as impersonal as photographs. There is no other Australian artist who has ever achieved such an unlikely balance of grand ambition and self-effacement.