Design and Art Australia Online

painter and photographer in NSW. Samuel Cocks was born in Bathurst in 1870 to William and Marguerita Cocks who moved to Kiama in the 1880s and ran a general store in Manning street. Samuel studied art in Sydney and won prizes in the Art Students Prizes at the National Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1890: “In the still-life group, Mr S. Cocks wins the first prize for a well-painted representation of a decanter and glasses on a table. The picture is particularly well-painted and well-deserving of its place” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 8 January 1890, p.8)commented “... among the still-life studies in oil, the first prize of £5 is awarded to no.35 by S. Cocks – a really admirable study of a decanter containing some wine, a wine glass, bronze candlestick, table-napkin and ring, standing on a polished table. The dark crimson curtain forming the background is well chosen for effect” ( Illustrated Sydney News , 22 January 1890, p.22). He went on to exhibit in the Society of Artists in 1895 and 1899. By that time he had already learned photography and was winning prizes and notice. A.J. Hill Griffith in his report on 'Pictorial Photography in Australia’ for the 1900 British annual _Photograms of the Year_p.45, noted that, 'Mr. Samuel Cocks, of the little coastal town of Kiama, has been occupying himself with sea and landscape work in platino. In production of the former he displays knowledge of the technical requirements necessary to give true perspective to distant ocean waves and bring in favorable contrast fine bold foregrounds. Storm and Gleam (p. 46), Stevenson’s Last Rest, and Nature’s Mirror, are three meritable subjects.’

Cocks joined the studio of Henry Holden’s in Kiama established in 1889, and took over the studio in 1898. He was winning prizes for his art photographs. Cocks continued sales and exhibitions of his impressionistic water colour paintings mostly sea and landscapes until late life.

Cocks was active in sports and social bodies and well known. He made extensive tours of the district building a large inventory. A fine album in the State Library of New South Wales of the Coolangatta Estate is extraordinary for its record of the indigenous servants and farm workers. An album of New Zealand views from 1904 exists but how long Cocks was there is not certain. Cocks made a trip overseas in 1903 returning via San Francisco. Elder brothers Robert Sidney and George Wesley also worked as artists and as photographers but after Samuel had begun his professional career.
A large archive of Cock’s glass plates of landscape, architecture and people Kiama and the South coast, is held by the University of Woolongong.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2022