The painting captures a specifically British pre-wedding custom, the hen party, but artist Beryl Cook treats it as more than comic spectacle. She makes working-class and middle-class women the stars of public life by being visible, celebratory, self-possessed, and fully entitled to pleasure. Her art often centered women in pubs, clubs, cafés, and streets, recording the sociability of everyday life with affection rather than condescension. Five women cluster together in a tight, cheerful group, filling nearly the whole picture. Their bodies are rounded and buoyant, with Cook’s signature exaggeration making them feel larger than life, confident, and impossible to ignore. At the center is the bride-to-be, wearing a large tall white party hat trimmed with balloons, ribbons, and floral decorations. The others lean close around her in bright dresses and tops, their faces rosy, amused, and alert with shared excitement. Red lipstick, flushed cheeks, and glossy accessories heighten the mood of a night out before marriage. The scene feels crowded but affectionate, with no background distraction pulling attention away from the women’s camaraderie. Cook turns the group into a monument of laughter, ritual, and collective female presence. These are not idealized bodies or polished society beauties. They are vivid, social, ordinary women made unforgettable through humor, scale, and warmth. Made in 1995, “Hen Party II” belongs to Cook’s mature period, when her instantly recognizable style had become one of the most widely loved in Britain. A plausible real-life spark for this image survives in local Plymouth memory when a specific woman’s 1995 hen night reportedly inspired both this painting and a related work. That rootedness matters. Cook was not inventing fantasy women from a distance. She was observing the social worlds around her and transforming them into democratic icons. The humor is real, but so is the dignity for a record of female friendship and public joy.
“Hen Party II” by Beryl Cook (British) - Oil on board / 1995 - Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (Glasgow, Scotland) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #BerylCook #Cook #BritishArt #GlasgowMuseums #GlasgowMuseumsResourceCentre #artText #art #1990sArt #BritishArtist #WomenPaintingWomen
![American artist William Y. Cooper interprets with paint Nina Simone’s 1966 song “Four Women,” which names Black female archetypes shaped by slavery, racism, sexual violence, colorism, and generational pain. He transforms the lyrics into a vivid, musical structure of line and color. That approach fits the artist well as he was deeply inspired by music and rarely painted without it, while his broader practice joined African heritage and American experience through symbolism and metaphor.
Four stylized women fill the canvas, their bodies elongated and interlocked like a chorus. Cooper breaks their forms into angular planes of violet, indigo, orange, red, pink, and blue, so that skin, dress, and background pulse together. Their faces are masklike and expressive. Hands lift, torsos turn, and patterned fabrics ripple, creating a feeling of rhythm, motion, and emotional pressure.
Across their bodies, painted words identify Simone’s four victimized and overlooked Black women as Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing, and Peaches.
- Aunt Sarah is strong with black skin, woolly hair, and a strong back that is “strong enough to take the pain … Inflicted again and again.”
- Saffronia is a product of sexual violence inflicted on her mother by her white father. Having yellow skin with long hair, she is caught between two worlds.
- Sweet Thing represents the Jezebel archetype, with tan skin and fine hair. Universally accepted because of the sexual gratification she provides, Simone sings, “Whose little girl am I? … Anyone who has money to buy.”
- Lastly, Peaches is described as brown skin, tough, and embittered “because [her] parents were slaves.” With her endures the generational trauma of oppression and racism.
By 1999, Cooper was a mature Buffalo artist, muralist, teacher, and self-described “Afrocentric artist,” using color to create rhythm and layered meaning. Here, beauty and critique coexist. The women are sensual, dignified, fractured, and resilient all at once.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:dtli5s7b2qnvvqcgh74ruri5/bafkreigniv3o5nycxptua7t24cpkfxmq6h2swmhffbsu4a4ogvdy3csp4q)
