(b Independence, IA, Aug 31, 1881; d Palma de Mallorca, Nov 10, 1959). American painter and architectural patron . The son of a small-town lawyer and landowner, he left home in 1898 to study art at the Art Institute of Chicago and later, the National Academy of Design in New York. Moving to Paris in 1903, he studied with Adolphe-William Bouguereau and Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian. In 1907, while visiting the Vatican, he became the first American artist to be allowed to paint a portrait of Pope Pius X. Returning to Paris, he became friends with American writer Gertrude Stein ( see Stein, (3) ) and her companion, Alice B. Toklas, who subsequently introduced him to many artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jacques Lipchitz, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Graves. Prior to World War I, Stein and Toklas vacationed together with Cook and his future wife, artist’s model Jeanne Maollic, on the island of Mallorca. Returning to Paris, Cook worked as a taxi driver, then used his taxi to teach Stein to drive, so that she and Toklas could transport supplies for the French war effort. Cook and Stein became close friends, with the result that he is featured in her two autobiographies and several other works. After the war, he spent two years working for the Red Cross in the Caucasus, aiding refugees in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution....