Beryl Cook valuation

Beryl Cook was born in Egham in 1926 and came to painting late and entirely without training, having worked as a showgirl, in an insurance office, and running a boarding house in Plymouth. She painted her first picture in her thirties on a piece of wood, using her son's paintbox, and was discovered in 1975 when a Plymouth gallery mounted a show. The subject never changed: large, contented, unmistakably ordinary people in pubs, on buses, at the bingo, dancing, on holiday, painted with obvious affection and a total indifference to the fashions of the day. She was made an OBE in 1995 and died in 2008.

The paintings are unique, generally oil on board or on panel rather than canvas, and are the substantial part of the market. Against them sits a very large volume of signed limited-edition prints published during her lifetime and a great many unsigned open-edition reproductions, posters and greetings cards, which are not the same thing and are regularly brought in as though they were. On a print, the pencil signature, the edition number in the margin and the publisher's blindstamp are what separate the two. The estate is the point of reference for authenticity.