Richard Cook was an English artist.
He was born in London in 1784, and entered the schools of the Royal Academy in 1800. He was a constant contributor to the exhibitions from 1808 to 1822, during which time he painted several landscapes not destitute of poetic beauty, scenes from The Lady of the Lake, displaying taste and talent, and in 1817, having been elected an Associate in the preceding year, a more ambitious work, entitled Ceres, disconsolate for the loss of Proserpine, rejects the solicitations of Iris, sent to her by Jupiter.
In 1822 he attained the rank of Royal Academician, and almost from that time forward, and certainly for many years preceding his death, he seems to have abandoned painting, and ceased to contribute to the annual exhibitions of the Academy, his private fortune enabling him to live independently of his art. He died in London in 1857.
He illustrated editions of The Lady of the Lake and Gertrude of Wyoming.
This article incorporates text from the article "COOK, Richard" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.