Olive Mudie Cooke - A War Artist's work discovered in a photo album in Toronto.

A short blog about an incidental find that I discovered while researching a wonderful photo album that belonged to Muriel English - a member of the Women's Legion serving in France during the Great War.

 

Among the photographs of the women, I recognised the name of one of the Motor Drivers. Olive Mudie-Cooke served in France and Italy from 1916 to the end of the war. In 1920 the Red Cross commissioned her to return to France and record the activities of the VADs. Olive's biography has been recorded before (see links below) and her artwork is widely recognised and reproduced.  The first two photos have been  helpfully named "The Mudie Cookes" but I do not know which one is Olive!

 

 Mudie Cooke's tea party

 

 

The album I am researching (free to view online, link below) not only has photos of Olive in France but also includes some artwork - some of it definitely hers and some that seems very likely to be  hers. I wonder if these works  have been seen before, hidden as they are in this obscure album

 

 "The Mudie Cookes"

Olive's two sisters also served in France.

 

While working as a VAD, Olive began to sketch and paint the scenes she saw around her, including ambulance drivers and medical staff. Most of her more well known watercolours that she painted after the war were purchased by the Red cross or the Imperial War Museum. However, among Muriel English's photo album were several cartoons and sketches - a couple seem to have definitely been done by Olive but one or two have no known artist - Could they be by Olive? What do you think?!

 

  

 

This is  definitely by Olive - it appears to be a Christmas Card sent by Olive from Italy to her old friends.

 

I think this is by Olive - it appears to be set in Italy and has that lightness of touch that she brings to many of her sketches.There is also a notation "26 MAC Keep Smiling" in the top left hand corner. Olive has also  written this on her Xmas Card

 

The next two items are cartoons found among the photographs in Muriel's album. They seem to me to be very much like Olive's work - they are certainly very accomplished - and Muriel had studied at art school before the War.

 

 

 

Even if some of these were not drawn by Olive, they are still rather wonderful! And hidden away in a photograph album that probably hasn't been opened in 100 years. Thank goodness the Museum of Toronto purchased it and even more luckily  - digitised it for free online access!

 

Finally, a sketch and a painting that can definitely be attributed to her!

 

 

 

 VAD ambulance driver in theory, in popular fiction and in real life’ 

by Olive Mudie-Cooke

Finally, Olive's most famous painting

 

 

In an Ambulance, painted by Olive Mudie-Cooke between 1916 and 1918 

© Imperial War Museum

 

It's been really enjoyable to delve once again into  Muriel English's "photo album" and to discover so much more but I was very saddened to discover that Olive committed suicide in a French Hotel room. She was aged just 36. Touchingly, her war service was very much recognised in the news story

 

 News relating to Olive's death. She died in September 1925.

 

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Mudie-Cooke

https://www.redcross.org.uk/stories/our-movement/our-history/women-war-artists 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasfisherlibrary/albums/72157703315352932/with/46352297704 

British Newspaper Archives