Irascible: The Combative Life of Douglas Cooper, Collector and Friend of Picasso

This lively book by Adrian Clark and Richard Calvocoressi recounts the adventures of self-taught English art historian and critic Douglas Cooper (1911–1984). Cooper began collecting works by Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, and Pablo Picasso in the 1930s and made his name as a scholar with his catalogue of the Courtauld Collection in 1954 and his catalogue raisonné of Gris’s work in 1977. He also organized exhibitions by Braque and Paul Gauguin, and two Cubist surveys, including the epochal The Essential Cubism, cocurated with Gary Tinterow at Tate, London, in 1983.

The fruit of extensive research, Irascible is the definitive narrative of Cooper’s art dealing, collecting, curating, and writing. It documents his directorship of London’s Mayor Gallery in the 1930s, when he befriended artists such as Francis Bacon and Henry Moore; his wartime experiences as an ambulance driver in France; his job recovering Nazi-looted art in Switzerland; and the feuds with leading figures and institutions in the British art world that made him a divisive figure. Extensively illustrated and featuring a foreword by David Hockney, Irascible is a highly readable and well-documented account of a colorful life in art.