Painter, printmaker, and children’s book illustrator Barbara Latham was born in Walpole, Massachusetts in 1896. She lived most of her life in the West. She was raised in Norwich, Connecticut and studied at the Norwich Free Academy and then attended Pratt Institute from 1915 to her graduation in 1919. She then studied with Andrew Dasburg at the Art Students League summer school in Woodstock, New York.
She spent the early part of her career in New York, where she worked for the Norcross Publishing Company and did illustrations for Forum magazine and the New York Times Sunday magazine.
In 1925, Latham went to Taos, New Mexico, for the first time to get material for illustrations for a greeting card company. She met artist Howard Cook, who was in the process of developing illustrations for Willa Cather’s novel, Death Comes to the Archbishop, and the couple married in 1927. From 1928 to 1935, they traveled widely including to Mexico; Springfield, Massachusetts; Paris, France; and Norwich, Connecticut. In 1933, the couple made their home near Taos, on the Talpa Ridge just south of the town. In 1976, they made their final move, which was to Santa Fe.
