George Cooke (22 January 1781 – 27 February 1834) was an English line engraver active in the early‑19th century. Born in London to a German‑born confectioner, he began his artistic training at age fourteen as an apprentice to the noted engraver James Basire.
After completing his apprenticeship, Cooke produced a substantial body of work for illustrated publications. Early commissions included plates for The Beauties of England and Wales (circa 1801–1815), often in collaboration with his elder brother, William Bernard Cooke. He later contributed to John Pinkerton’s multi‑volume Collection of Voyages and Travels and supplied two plates for the first edition of The Thames (1811).
Cooke’s most significant projects involved collaborations with leading landscape artists of the period. He engraved fifteen plates for Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (1814–1826), a series based on drawings principally by J. M. W. Turner. For Loddiges’ The Botanical Cabinet (1817–1833) he produced numerous botanical plates, and he provided illustrations for Hakewill’s Picturesque Tour of Italy (1820) and Sir Walter Scott’s Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland (1826), notably the “Edinburgh from the Calton Hill” view.
Other notable commissions included plates for Thomas Allason’s Antiquities of Pola (1819), John Spencer‑Stanhop’s Olympia (1824), the Dilettanti Society’s publications, and the Ancient Marbles and Ancient Terracottas catalogues of the British Museum. In 1825 he completed a fine engraving of “Rotterdam” after Augustus Wall Callcott; a subsequent prospectus announced a series of Callcott plates, though the venture was abandoned after financial setbacks.
From 1826 to 1834 Cooke issued the serial work Views in London and its Vicinity, featuring drawings by Callcott, Stanfield, Roberts, Prout, Stark, Harding, Cotman, and Havell. In the final year of his life he collaborated with his son, marine painter Edward William Cooke, on plates of the Old and New London Bridges. Additional contributions included illustrations for Frederick Nash’s Views in Paris, Colonel Batty’s Views of European Cities, Baron Taylor’s Spain, and various regional scenery series.
Cooke was a founding member of the Society of Associated Engravers, formed to coordinate the engraving of artworks from the National Gallery. Although he experimented with mezzotint, his attempts—such as an unissued plate of “Arundel Castle” after Turner—were not commercially successful.
George Cooke died of “brain fever” on 27 February 1834 in Barnes, where he was buried. His extensive engravings, especially those after Turner and other prominent landscape artists, contributed significantly to the visual documentation of British topography and natural history in the early nineteenth century.