[From the catalogue-in-progress for “Landscapes & Livestock”, a loan exhibition for Agincourt Homecoming in the Fall of 2015]

COOKSEY, May Louise Greville [1878-1943]

Procession

1908

gouache on board / 13.5 inches by 9.5 inches

Among the foreign artists represented in the Community Collection, a surprising number are British and, of them, several are connected in one way or another with the Arts & Crafts movement of the late 19th century. May Louise Greville Cooksey may be the last of her generation to fall under the sway of William Morris and his artistic kin among the Pre-Raphaelites.

Like Margaret Lloyd, artist of the “Punch & Judy” stained glass window in Agincourt’s first kindergarten, Cooksey attended art school in Liverpool. A travelling scholarship from the city also permitted her to visit Italy (where this gouache may have been painted in 1908), perhaps as much an artistic pilgrimage as it may have been religious: Cooksey had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1899.