Jane White Cooke obituary
My mother, Jane White Cooke, who has died aged 98, was a gifted and successful portrait painter. In her early 20s, she was awarded a prize by the National Academy of Design in New York, which included funds to spend a year studying in Florence, where she rented a big studio on the Costa San Giorgio and lived for art and fun. Soon after this dynamic take-off, Jane married Whit Hawkes, and she felt later that she never fulfilled her potential as an artist because love, family and children diverted her.
Jane was married, secondly, for 58 years until his death, to Alistair Cooke, the journalist, broadcaster and television presenter. They met in a lift at the Croydon hotel in New York, while Jane was married to my father, Whit. Alistair was smitten, and later, when Jane became a war widow (Whit died in the Phillipines in 1943), Alistair wooed and won her with his wit, glamour and charismatic cheek.
Marriage to a celebrity was not always easy for the beautiful and talented Jane. She needed to pursue her art, so she established her winter studio in a cheap tenement in New York and spent her summers painting in the Bauhaus beach house in Long Island that she and Whit had built during the war. Alistair relished his Fifth Avenue study with its view of the park and palatial hallway, where he practised his putting. He was a town mouse, but loved visiting his beloved at weekends and playing golf.
Giving each other this room to breathe strengthened their affection and respect for each other. Jane called him Cookie and he called her Tootsie. They loved visiting London together, always stayed in Mayfair and sat in the royal box to watch the tennis at Wimbledon. Jane adored France and Italy, so my generous stepfather sent the two of us on a continental jaunt each spring and was delighted to foot the bill. He was happy staying in London, hobnobbing with his cronies or watching golf on the TV.
My mother was born Jane White in Montclair, New Jersey, the daughter of William, an engineer with the General Electric Company, and his wife, Frances. When she was nine, the depression hit her family's finances, so her widowed mother took her three daughters to Tours in France, where they could live cheaply. There, Jane said, she saw one of the last guillotines to be erected for a public execution. Forbidden by her mum to watch the event, Jane nevertheless claimed she heard the blade drop. She loved telling the story to her children as much as they loved hearing it.
Her portrait of Alistair, who died in 2004, is in the National Gallery in Washington. She is survived by three children, Stephen, Susan and me, 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.