Painter, print maker, and book illustrator Barbara Latham was born in Walpole, Massachusetts and raised in Norwich, Connecticut. Artistically adept in her youth, she studied in summer programs and in addition to classes at the Art Students League in New York, Latham pursued formal studies at Pratt institute in Brooklyn, from which she graduated in 1919.

Settling in Taos, New Mexico as an illustrator, she met and married the artist Howard Cook. The two lived and worked in the American Southwest and traveled extensively. Latham was the first artist in residence at the Roswell Museum, where the couple wintered and settled permanently in 1973.