Thomas Sidney Cooper RA was a distinguished British painter of landscapes, animals and portraits who became one of the foremost masters of his genre despite facing extraordinary circumstances. He was affectionately known as “Cow Cooper”.
Born in Canterbury, Kent, his early years were marked by abject poverty as his father, William Cooper, deserted the family, leaving his mother to raise five children alone. Food prices were high due to the effects of the Napoleonic War and he was encouraged to learn a gainful trade to generate much-needed income.
At 12 years old, he began an apprenticeship as a coach builder, during which he was taught the basics of mixing colours. He did so while continuing to sketch from nature - escaping into the surrounding countryside at every opportunity. He also undertook numerous drawings of Canterbury Cathedral with many of these sold to the clergy and occasional passing aristocrats. In his 1890 autobiography, he recalls being provided with pencils and paper by the illustrator, George Cattermole RWS (1800-1868), who took pity on the state of his materials.
Cooper was determined to persevere with his artistic pursuits, despite the wishes of his mother, and, by chance, happened to impress a local painter of theatrical scenery. Despite being gravely ill, ‘Mr Doyle’ taught the aspiring lad, who subsequently gained work at a travelling theatre company.
Following his time with the theatre, his uncle took him to London, where he first studied the sculptures at the British Museum before enrolling as a ‘probationer’ at Royal Academy schools. Henry Fuseli RA (1741-1825) was his teacher during this period whereby his primary task was to study the works of antiquity. Possessing a ‘good eye’, his drawings were met with much approval and he was admitted as a full student.
However, around 1825, while on the cusp of achieving his dream, he was sent back to Canterbury to live with his mother - his Academy hopes now in tatters. He described this period as a particularly difficult one during which he considered switching careers.
In 1827, together with a good friend, Cooper visited the continent where he travelled with no particular plan - preferring to live, once again, on his wits. For a while, he worked as a signwriter and a drawing master, while also producing numerous portraits for village locals. During a three-year stay in Belgium, he met, by chance, the great Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven (1798-1881) - a celebrated painter of animals. Verboeckhoven was generous, offering his time for free and encouraging the young Englishman to take up oil painting. Both were keen admirers of the Dutch and Flemish masters, such as Paulus Potter and Albert Cuyp. Cooper was deeply inspired.
From this point on, having overcome a series of trials and tribulations, his career gathered momentum - soon exhibiting at both the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Academy. In 1842, with his popularity ever-increasing, his 'Intercepted Raid, Ettrick Shepherd' was sold at Sotheby’s for a record-breaking sum of £37,500, which established him firmly in the minds of collectors and dealers alike. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy a few years later and a full member in 1867.
With his career firmly established, Cooper returned to Kent and lived in the picturesque rural village of Harbledown near Canterbury. He acquired numerous animals, allowing him to paint from life, and encouraged others to do the same.
“I have always found that the continual looking at and pondering over the beautiful and ever-changing effects of Nature keeps one from mannerism and self; and it is my decided opinion that all landscape-painters should live in the country. Those silvery atmospheric effects, with their attendant colouring of tender greys, which may be noticed during certain phases and changes of the weather; the soft yet warm tints from an evening sun, with the lengthening shadows stealing over the surrounding landscape, and those lovely gleams glinting through the foliage of the darkening trees, are effects which are never, or rarely, seen in London, where the sun (when there is any) is either scorching and glaring, or shining through a foggy atmosphere with the colouring of a copper pan in a kitchen.”
Later in life, in a remarkable act of philanthropy, he opened the Sidney Cooper Gallery and Art School to help children from disadvantaged families. It bears a plaque with a dedication to his mother. He exhibited over 200 works at the Royal Academy.
Thomas Sidney Cooper RA is represented at the National Gallery, Tate Britain, the V&A Museum and at The Beaney in Canterbury.
Exhibited
Royal Academy, Royal Society of British Artists, British Institution.
Public Collections
The National Gallery, The Beaney in Canterbury, Tate Britain, V&A Museum, Birmingham Museum, Brighton and Hove Museum, Astley Hall Museum and Art Gallery, Bantock House and Park, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Brampton Museum, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Burton Art Gallery and Museum, Bury Art Museum, Chelmsford Museum Store, University of Cambridge, Ferens Art Gallery, Fylde Council Town Hall, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, Grundy Art Gallery, Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Museum, Rochester Guildhall Museum, Hackney Museum, Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Haworth Art Gallery, Lady Lever Art Gallery.
Timeline
1803
Born in Canterbury, Kent, England to William Cooper and Sarah Cooper (nee Sabine).
C. 1808
Father deserted the family.
1811
Received head injuries after being shot with a horse pistol.
C. 1815
Apprenticed to Mr Burgess, a coach builder.
Worked as a coach painter.
Produced numerous drawings of Canterbury Cathedral. Many of which were sold to tourists, members of the clergy and various aristocrats.
Taught by ‘Mr Doyle’, a scenery painter for a theatre.
Worked as a scenery painter for a travelling theatre company.
C. 1823
Moved to London to live with his aunt and uncle.
Studied at the British Museum alongside George Richmond RA (1809-1896) and Stephen Catterson Smith (1806-1872).
Following a recommendation from Abraham Cooper RA (1787-1868), he was successfully admitted into Royal Academy schools, London, as a ‘probationer’. He was taught by Henry Fuseli RA (1741-1825) among others.
Accepted into Royal Academy schools following probation but was forced to move back to Canterbury and, as such, was unable to continue his studies.
C. 1826
Worked as a drawing master in Canterbury.
1827
Travelled to Brussels, Belgium, and undertook work as a portrait painter/drawing master.
Met and sketched with Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven (1798-1881), a painter of animals, who greatly inspired him.
C. 1828/1829
Commissioned by Don Michado to produce sepia drawings of the “principal Gothic buildings in Belgium”.
Commissioned by Prince d'Arenberg to produce lithographs after works by Paul Potter and Adrian Vanderveldt.
1829
Undertook a sketching tour of “Namur , Dinant, Liège, and other places on the Meuse” with Captain Charles Hotham.
Married Charlotte Pearson in Brussels, Belgium, the daughter of “a professor of the science of fortification”.
1830
Travelled to Amsterdam to produce a drawing of the King's palace for a member of the Belgian Royal Household.
1831
Returned to Canterbury following the Belgian Revolution. Declined an invitation from the Spanish Ambassador to move to Madrid.
Moved to London and lived with his wife and child in lodgings on Tottenham Court Road.
C. 1832
Produced drawings for lithographic prints, which were transferred onto ‘ladies’ work-boxes and other wooden articles’ for the London dealer, Ackerman.
Studied cattle at Smithfield cattle market.
Began working extensively in oils and generating greater interest from the principal art dealers.
1833
Became acquainted with the marine artist, George Hyde Chambers (1803-1840).
Debuted at Suffolk Street (Royal Society of British Artists) where his work was noticed by Mr. Robert Vernon who would become a keen patron.
Moved to St John’s Wood, London, and sketched often at Primrose Hill.
Sold a piece to the Earl of Essex.
Debuted at the Royal Academy in London with ‘Landscape and Cattle’.
1834
‘Milking Time: Study in a Farmyard near Canterbury’ shown at the Royal Academy. It’s now with the National Gallery.
1842
His work 'Intercepted Raid, Ettrick Shepherd' sold at Sotheby’s for a record-breaking sum of £37,500.
Death of wife Charlotte in Wellington, New Zealand.
1845
Elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.
Undertook a sketching trip to North Wales.
1847-1870
Collaborated with the artist Frederick Richard Lee RA (1798-1879).
1848
Commissioned by Queen Victoria to paint a cow on the estate of Osborne House. Her response to the resulting work was “Oh yes, that is my Buffie!”.
1850
Spent the majority of his time in the country.
1851
Lived in St Marylebone, London, with his four children and servants.
1856
Designed a new theatre for Canterbury.
1861
Death of daughter, Maria Charlotte Cooper during a voyage to Australia aboard ‘The Champion of Seas’.
Lived in St Marylebone, London, with his three children, grandchildren, and servants.
1863
Death of daughter Lucy Elizabeth Cooper.
Married Mary Cannon in Canterbury, Kent.
Moved to Vernon Holme, Harbledown, Canterbury.
1867
Elected a member of the Royal Academy.
1868
Purchased the house where he was born and converted it into the Sidney Cooper Gallery and Art School.
1871
Lived in St Peter, London, with servants.
1881
Lived in Kensington, London, with his wife, two sons, and servants.
1882
Lived in Canterbury, Kent.
1901
Lived in Harbledown, Canterbury, Kent.
Appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by King Edward VII.
1902
Died in Harbledown, Canterbury, Kent.
Excerpts From Cooper's Autobiography
“I would here remark that it is not an uncommon but a very serious failing amongst students in art, and especially amongst amateurs, to wish to paint before they can draw. It is a fatal mistake, and if they would only have patience in this respect at the commencement of their studies, and persevere in the, perhaps, less attractive black and white till they have mastered the difficulties of drawing, with perspective and other necessary knowledge, they would find their subsequent improvement much more rapid, and in every respect more satisfactory.”
“I took a great deal of pains to catch the animals in every variety of attitude, and to make studies of the cattle and sheep in all their different positions and movements. One thing I was most anxious to accomplish, and that was the action of a beast walking on from place to place, nibbling a bit of grass here and there, and chewing the cud as it goes, in the way they often do. For this purpose I singled out one particularly restless cow, and began making a sketch of her, following her about day after day, drawing when I could, and watching her every movement. It was a difficult task, but I succeeded tolerably well in the end, having before finishing my study walked (according to an elaborate calculation), in the pursuit of this one animal, fully one hundred miles!”
“In my work I could myself see the result of my renewed intercourse, so to speak, with the great school of Nature, and this must have been equally apparent to all appreciative friends and patrons who happened to have been the purchasers of any of my pictures painted during this period of my career. I have always found that the continual looking at and pondering over the beautiful and ever-changing effects of Nature keeps one from mannerism and self; and it is my decided opinion that all landscape-painters should live in the country. Those silvery atmospheric effects, with their attendant colouring of tender greys, which may be noticed during certain phases and changes of the weather; the soft yet warm tints from an evening sun, with the lengthening shadows stealing over the surrounding landscape, and those lovely gleams glinting through the foliage of the darkening trees, are effects which are never, or rarely, seen in London, where the sun (when there is any) is either scorching and glaring, or shining through a foggy atmosphere with the colouring of a copper pan in a kitchen.”
“'Till I was nearly thirty years of age, I always lived a free, unconventional life; I had never taken a glass of sherry or any wine whatever, for I did not mix in the sort of society where wine was taken, nor had I the means to procure it. Now, as I get more known, I am continually invited out to dinner and evening parties, so that I lose my natural rest, and rise in the morning unrefreshed and without the energy that I had before I came to London. I shall now, therefore, endeavour to live a more simple life; I shall give up tea entirely, as that does not agree with the little wine I am obliged to take, and will substitute oatmeal porridge for it at breakfast, with a little salt and no milk; I will take care to masticate my food thoroughly, and will cut it into small pieces, so that I shall not call upon my teeth to do what my knife should do, nor upon my stomach to do what my teeth may be fairly supposed to be capable of doing. I shall never take more to eat than I think I require, as I have no desire to dig my grave with my teeth; and I intend to lay out my life altogether, for the future, upon the more primitive lines of my early days, which I feel that I shall be enabled to do better in the country than in London, and this has been one of my principal reasons for taking up my abode at Harbledown.”
“I have always been desirous to infuse a taste for art amongst all classes, and many persons think I have succeeded to some extent among the inhabitants of my native town. I think so too; and in moving about among the crowds collected to look at my pictures, I have frequently noticed boys who I fancied might show some talent if they had a chance of learning to draw. I thought of what service a knowledge of drawing would be to those who were being brought up to many trades, such, for instance, as carpentry, building, and other handicrafts; and I thought, too, how I would like to give these boys, the sons of poor parents, the advantages that I had not, when a boy myself. Therefore, when I became the possessor, as I have just related, of those houses in St. Peter's Street, Westgate, my ideas shortly took shape, and my scheme developed itself into a reality.”
“Although in my boyhood I had neither help nor encouragement, I was always trying to do something in the way of drawing, and I did not feel the want of help when I first began, almost in babyhood, nearly so keenly as I did later, when, by continually making small attempts to copy what I saw in Nature, my young mind began to see and appreciate its beauties. As my reasoning faculties gradually developed themselves, I learned to appreciate these beauties and the varied effects and moods of Nature more and more, especially when going out to sketch, and to feel how very small were my powers of reproducing what I saw. But what could one do on a slate, the only material I had to draw upon? I did indeed then long for help, which I did not get; but I learned little by little to depend upon my own resources, and by perseverance to gain by slow degrees what others are taught quickly. I learned, too, that an earnest love of art, in however young a mind, will not be kept inactive or crushed out by the want of proper development, and that however poor may be the means by which the necessary knowledge can be gained, the innate influence of that love will always make itself felt.
Other lessons, too, I learned as time went on- patience, perseverance, pluck, steadiness, fearlessness, and trust in that Higher Power who watches over us all. I always was hopeful and determined, and as I got older I had an intuitive impression that the Lord, in His providential dealings with mankind, has created us all for some definite and special purpose which He does not permit man to frustrate; and I felt that neither neglect nor contumely would ever entirely subdue my aspirations, nor cause the Almighty to cease His care for me, if I only put my trust and confidence in His mercy for with Him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.'”
“When I began to exhibit my pictures, and success began to smile upon me, then I realised more fully how much I had to be thankful for; but even then I trusted too much to my own powers, being always rather of a sanguine nature, scarcely comprehending that my own unaided efforts would have availed but little in the race for fame; and I have often since regretted that I did not sooner learn to give Him the praise for all i had accomplished, and thank Him for His protection and favour, as I do now with all earnestness and sincerity.”
“Hard work is the best panacea for all evils of body or mind, and of this I have had my full share through the whole of my long life.”
Obituaries
The Irish Times
“The record of English Art History may be searched in vain for any parallel to the chequered career of Thomas Sidney Cooper. Few men in his profession had a harder struggle with fortune, and perhaps there was not one who ultimately realised so great a comparative triumph, and who, during the course of a singularly long life, ever more highly enjoyed the respect and esteem of the artistic and general community. He was born at Canterbury, September 26th, 1803, and his youthful days, as he has told us in his Autobiography, published in 1890, were spent amongst hapless surroundings. At the age of five, his mother and a family of five children, were heartlessly deserted by their father. There were many cares and little opportunity for education. But from early days, according to the volume referred to, Cooper had a passion for drawing. His start was of the humblest kind, but his fixed purpose was to succeed, and win a way to fame and fortune. Originally he worked at coach painting, and in 1815 was apprenticed to Mr. Burgess, a then well-known coach-builder, who showed him no little kindness. The young artist was lonely, and valued this early encouragement, and we find the significantly pathetic sentence in his book, ‘When I heard Mr. Burgess's son call him father,' I used to cry.’
Many anecdotes are narrated concerning this period of Cooper's career. Upon one occasion, when be was sketching in Canterbury Cathedral, and had blunted his pencils, be appealed to an old clergyman of venerable aspect passing by to lend him a penknife in order to sharpen them, and the stranger thereupon pointed twelve of the lad's store, he only later discovering that it was the Archbishop himself, himself, who had noted and admired the sterling honesty of his work. At the age of 17 Cooper became a scene painter at the Hastings Theatre. Afterwards he was employed as a drawing master in his native town, and then, wandering through France and Belgium, literally sketching his way, settled in Brussels until he was compelled to return to England by the disturbances of 1850.
Fortunate in obtaining the patronage of Mr. Vernon, the famous collector, his advance in his profession was rapid. About 1840 his works began to be well known in the Royal Academy. ‘Going to Pasture,’ ‘Watering at Evening.’ and ‘Monarch of the Meadows’ attracted general attention. In 1845 he was elected an Associate, and in 1867 a full Academician. He devoted his rare talents and, as above all, a naturalist painter who always went to the well-spring of nature for his impressions to the study of landscape and animal portraiture, and was fortunate enough to receive the encomiums of Her late Majesty and Prince Albert, as those also of Turner. His book, ‘My Life,’ was drawn from him unwillingly. In the heyday of his renown he was tormented by inquisitive inquirers who wanted to know whence he came, what his parentage, what his art theory, and he informs us that at last he succumbed to the persuasions of his friends, and consented to put his personal memoir on paper. The book is one which has lost nothing of its power to charm the reader - simple in diction, unaffected and candid, true in every respect to the author's own unconventional, though occasionally half-conscious, egotism.
If we cannot rank Cooper among the greatest artists of the Victorian age, at least none of those who were his contemporaries, or who are his critics, can deny to him possession of those supreme qualities of earnestness and of industry which often nearly touched the level of genius. Not a few of his cattle groups resembled those of Cuyp, and they, happily, are preserved and valued in many collections as faithful presentations of animal forms. During latter years Mr. Cooper's colouring was unequal, and, in the judgement of some, became hard and unsympathetic. But our estimate of the artist must rest upon the production not of the latter, but upon that of the fruitful and virile period of his career, and, that criterion being adopted, the world of art must confess that, though neither a Cuyp, a Paul Potter, nor a Landseer, his imagination was permeated by some, at least, of the qualities of these masters, and that he has contributed contributed to the English school of painting, work of high and enduring order.
Were we to strive after a panegyric of the artist we could pronounce none better than that ingenuously uttered in the last paragraph of his remarkable autobiography thus frankly and with unwitting pathos expressed:- ’I feel that I have risen to some distinction, and that I have a name which no gold could purchase nor parchment alienate. I have, moreover, found peace in the better knowledge of my Saviour and grace which will comfort me for the rest of my life; as well as trust which will bear me through the dark valley when my time comes, and the blest assurance that there is a glorious immortality, and that I shall one day see Him as He is.’ As a philanthropist, Thomas Sidney Cooper rendered notable services to his fellow. men, and his memory will be reverenced in the mind of the world of art, and equally so in that of letters and of humanity at large.”
Black & White
“The Titian Of Our Day: The Passing Of Mr Sidney Cooper.
Our Grand Old Man of Art has passed to his rest, and thousands of people today are mourning the death of Thomas Sidney Cooper, R.A. Full of years and honours the patriarch has left his easel for the last time, and gone to his reward with the record of a noble and blameless life for examination. There are many veterans living in our midst today whose deeds a generation or so ago filled the public mind. But the public memory is short, and great achievements are soon left as the portion of the historian, while the doer of them is allowed to sink into oblivion. But this was never the case with Sidney Cooper. The picturesque figure of the patriarch was never forgotten. For the past sixty-seven years without a break he has exhibited at the Royal Academy. He had as great joy in life, as earnest a purpose ever before him, a sense of always a little more work necessary to be done in his last years as in the days when, as a struggling youth getting barely sufficient to fill his stomach, he sold his first sketch for a shilling to a casual observer of his work.
A Veteran's Prayer
Like Titian, who was engaged upon a great picture when he died at the age of ninety-nine, the English patriarch preserved full command of his faculties to the last. He averred that his hand had never been steadier nor his eyesight more clear than during the last year of his life. His easel still claimed his attention to the last, and all his public and private engagements were as punctiliously attended to as though he had been fifty years younger. He was so kind as to grant an interview to a representative of Black and White for the very day upon which his fatal illness set in. His heart was warmly set upon exhibiting at the Academy in his hundredth year. His canvas will be upon the walls though the hand that painted it be cold and stilled.
His prayer was that his strength of vision and dexterity of hand might not desert him until the end. And that wish was fulfilled. Canterbury - his birthplace and scene of his early and miserable struggles was always very dear to him. He left it to seek his fortune in London, and journeyed to the Continent in pursuit of the same object. He was close upon thirty before he took to animal painting, though from earliest childhood sketching had been his sole delight. When at last he managed to get a picture hung at the Academy, and his work was finding increasing appreciation, he returned to Canterbury to make his home there again. He never forgot his humble origin, and was never ashamed of the struggle which he and his mother had had after his father had deserted them.
Heart and Art
To perpetuate the memory of the good woman, his mother, he presented Canterbury with a splendid Art Museum. Sidney Cooper never forgot a kindness. His first oil painting was sold to his patron, a Mr. Vernon. Mr. Cooper called his house "Vernon Holme," in memory of the man who had befriended him. Nobody ever called upon the grand old man but received a courteous and cordial welcome. Free days at his home were one of the local institutions in the week, when all were welcome to visit and see the man, and his home and work. The two proudest days of Sidney Cooper's life occurred respectively in 1867 and 1901. On the first he was elected an Academician, an honour for which he had for many years longed. Last year he was granted the Royal Victorian Order by King Edward. It was characteristic of the kindly and happy thoughtfulness of the King that, in inviting Mr. Cooper to Marlborough House, he intimated that if any risk in his coming so far were likely to be involved, he should not on any account make the journey, but that the honour should be conferred in his absence. Equally characteristic of the sturdy old gentleman was it that he should unhesitatingly proceed to Marlborough House to receive from the hands of his Sovereign the honour granted him. Whatever the ultimate verdict as to his art, his name will stand as that of the man who reigned longer than any other British artist, who with an incomparable record of work accomplished, left also the record of a true English gentleman and a Christian.”
The Illustrated London News
“Mr. Sidney Cooper, who passed away on Feb. 7 at the great age of ninety-nine years, occupied the place of doyen d'âge among the Royal Academicians. Some twelve years ago he gave to the world a frank account of his career as an artist. What was most prominent in this biography was the steady determination of the man, who had started under disadvantages which would have discouraged those of a more sensitive nature, to achieve his own purpose. Never was the steadfastness - or, it may be said, the doggedness - of the men of Kent better exemplified than in the story of this gifted artist.
Mr. Cooper commenced life under the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral. He was one of five children who were deserted by their father, and left to be brought up by the mother, who must have been endowed with many rare qualities to have held her independence under the circumstances. Thomas Sidney Cooper was called after Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, with whom an uncle of the artist fought at Acre. Shortly after that action the Admiral asked Cooper's uncle if there was any news from home, and was answered by Cooper that his brother had got a boy. ‘Then write home and bid them call him after me,’ said Smith. By the time the letter arrived, young Thomas had been christened, and the clergyman was obdurate as to any alteration, but a shilling to the clerk did the business.
In 1803, the year in which Sidney Cooper was born, we were in the middle of the long Continental war; bread was Is. 8d. per 4-lb. loaf, and often rose to higher prices. Still, his mother struggled on courageously, and managed to send her children to school; but doubtless they had plenty of spare time, for in those days there was almost as little eagerness on the part of teachers to distribute knowledge as on that of the scholars to receive it. Somehow, young Sidney, although at first only equipped with a slate and pencil, would occupy his time in drawing, and from the very first he was attracted by the beauties of the cathedral under the shadow of which he lived. A little later a touching passage in his autobiography tells how he was first stirred by the beauties of a twilight evening, and how he lingered in the meadows until long after the hour of his mother's frugal supper had passed.
Sidney Cooper, however, had opportunities of which few can now boast. He remembered George the Third's Jubilee in 1809, and nearly eighty years later he saw the pageantry by which Queen Victoria's was marked. He could recall the winter of 1812, and compare it with that of 1854, both alike marked by their extreme cold and by expeditions against Russia. He recollected thirty thousand men marching through Canterbury on their way to Waterloo, and Blücher with "little bits of black, like sticking-plaster, on his face." At this time Cooper was apprenticed to a coach-painter, who seems to have treated him with kindness.
At length, in 1820, an uncle - ‘uncle d' Amérique,' as our neighbours would say-appeared from Clerkenwell, and Sidney Cooper, then just seventeen years old, was to be taken to London and to have such opportunities as the British Museum and the Royal Academy afforded. He began well, and his drawings attracted the notice of Fuseli, who was then Keeper of the Royal Academy; but, unfortunately, his studentship was cut short by the reverses which his uncle had to sustain. Cooper returned to Canterbury, and attempted to earn his living as a drawing-master. A fellow-teacher, who was a Frenchman, either to have Canterbury left open to himself, or out of really friendly feeling, suggested the Continent as offering a better chance. Cooper at once seized upon the idea, and, packing his few things together, started for Calais, armed, like Goldsmith, with a flute.
He had, however, no need to have recourse to its aid for self-maintenance. He painted his way from Calais to Brussels, stopping at villages and wayside farmhouses to paint portraits, thus earning sufficient to enable him to make longer halts in the larger towns. At Brussels wonderful good luck befell him, and, notwithstanding his ignorance of any language but his own, he managed to get a number of pupils, and, instructing others, learnt much from Eugène Verboeckhoven, whose influence on him was never effaced.
The Revolution in the Low Countries forced Cooper to return to London, where he began life again, but with a wife and child to support. His indomitable energy and pluck never deserted him, and his sense of independence never allowed him to be a burden on others. He sold drawings to the dealers for five shillings apiece. Cattle were his principal subjects, and the droves which in those days passed his lodgings on their way to Smithfield or peacefully grazed in the Regent's Park furnished him with models free of expense. In 1833 he sent his first picture to to the Suffolk Street Gallery, where it had the good fortune to attract the notice of Mr. Robert Vernon, from whom he received a commission to paint a picture which now forms part of the collection bequeathed by that generous art- benefactor to the National Gallery. Cooper, emboldened by this success, soon began sending pictures to the Royal Academy, among which the most noteworthy were ‘A Farmyard-Milking Time’ (1834), ‘Cattle-Early Morning’ (1847). In the meanwhile, in 1845, he had been elected an Associate, but he had to wait until 1867 before receiving the full honours, and his diploma picture, ‘In the Meadows at Curfew Hour,’ deposited in 1870, and will rank as one of Mr. Cooper's most characteristic works. He found patrons in all ranks, and none showed him more discriminating favour than her late Majesty and was the Prince Consort, by whom he was commissioned on several occasions to paint portraits of the cattle and animals in the royal parks and farms.
Among his more ambitious works, in which he reached a higher range of landscape effects, are ‘A Passing Shower,' ‘The Noonday Drink,’ ‘Children of the Mist,’ ‘A Summer's Sunny Evening,’ and ‘Amongst the Rocks,’ but these are only a very small number out of the hundreds of pictures which with indefatigable industry he had produced for nearly eighty years. He had hoped to see his usual eight pictures in the Academy of his hundredth year, but it has been ordered otherwise.”