Sipke Kool lived in Leeuwarden until the age of 20, when he moved to The Hague to train under the Frisian history and genre painter Christoffel Bisschop. Kool specialised in paintings of Frisian peasant interiors and, like his teacher, had a preference for decorative compositions and small, carefully arranged still lifes. He also painted Biblical scenes and Italian landscapes. From 1896 he lived in Blaricum.