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Born in 1901 in Springfield, Massachusetts, artist Howard Norton Cook was renowned for his wood engravings and murals. After studying at the Art Students League of New York, Cook spent the 1920s traveling in Europe before settling in Taos, New Mexico, in 1926. There, he met and married fellow artist Barbara Latham. Cook's early work involved illustrating for magazines, and his woodcuts gained recognition for their depiction of the Southwestern landscape and Pueblo Indians. He received two Guggenheim Fellowships in the 1930s, which allowed him to study fresco techniques in Mexico and document the American South's poverty through murals.

Cook's contributions to New Deal art projects included notable murals for courthouses in his hometown of Springfield and Pittsburgh, along with a mural for a post office in San Antonio. During World War II, Cook led an art unit in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, producing drawings and watercolors that were featured in the 1944 exhibition, The Army at War: A Graphic Record by American Artists. In 1967, Cook became the first artist-in-residence at the Roswell Museum and Art Center in New Mexico, and he continued to produce significant works until his health declined due to multiple sclerosis in the mid-1970s.

Cook's work spanned various mediums, including oil paintings, pastels, and collages. His style evolved from printmaking to more abstract and collage-based art in later years. He received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the SFB Morse Gold Medal from the National Academy of Design in 1976. While Cook passed away in Santa Fe in 1980, his enduring legacy is reflected through his many works held by prestigious institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York as well as the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.