William Edwards Cook's father died in 1924, at which time he became an heir (along with a sister and two brothers) to a substantial amount of money.
Today he is chiefly remembered not for his artistic achievements, but because, during World War I, he taught Stein to drive an automobile so that she could contribute to the French war effort, and because, in 1926, he commissioned the Swiss architect Le Corbusier (whose career was at an early stage) to design an innovative cubist home, on the outskirts of Paris, now called Maison Cook or Villa Cook.
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As a result, Cook was soon regarded as a young society artist (somewhat in the manner of John Singer Sargent, whom he admired and was acquainted with), and so received a flood of requests from other dignitaries to have their portraits painted.
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By way of her soirees and other events, Stein introduced Cook to scores of Modern-era artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jacques Lipchitz, Robert Graves, and so on.
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Already dismayed in the 1930s by his continuing lack of success as an artist, he apparently gave up painting, moved temporarily in Rome, and then settled with his wife in 1936 in Palma de Majorca, in the Balearic Islands.
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Following his 1903 departure from the U.S., Cook resided in Paris, Rome, Russia, and on the island of Majorca, in the Balearic Islands off the eastern coast of Spain.
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