Thomas Sidney Cooper
Encyclopedia
Thomas Sidney Cooper was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 landscape painter noted for his images of cattle and farm animals.

Cooper was born at Canterbury
Canterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, and as a small child he began to show strong artistic inclinations, but the circumstances of his family did not allow him to received any systematic training. By the time he was twelve years old, he was working in the shop of a coach painter. Later he obtained a job as a scene painter; and he alternated between these two occupations for about eight years. He still felt a desire to become an artist, and all his spare moments were spent drawing and painting from nature. At the age of twenty he went to London, drew for a while in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

.

He then returned to Canterbury, where he was able to earn a living as a drawing-master and by the sale of sketches and drawings. In 1827 he settled in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 and married; there he met Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven
Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven
Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven , Belgian painter, was born at Warneton in West Flanders, and received instruction in drawing and modelling from his father, the sculptor Barthélemy Verboeckhoven...

. Because of the Belgian Revolution
Belgian Revolution
The Belgian Revolution was the conflict which led to the secession of the Southern provinces from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and established an independent Kingdom of Belgium....

 he returned to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, and by showing his first picture at the Royal Academy (1833) began an unprecedentedly prolonged career as an exhibitor.
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When the competition was announced for the decoration for the new Houses of Parliament
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...

, to be held at Westminster Hall in 1847, Cooper submitted The Defeat of Kellermann's Cuirassiers and Carabiniers by Somerset's Cavalry Brigade at Waterloo, June 18, 1815. In order to complete the picture, the artist used Siborne's model of the battlefield then on exhibition in London, while a friend in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 sent him breastplates worn by the various cavalry regiments, and a trooper of the Life Guards
Life Guards
Life Guards may refer to several military regiments:*Life Guards *Life Guards *Russian Imperial Guard*Garde du Corps , during the Ancien Régime...

 acted as a model.

Cooper's name is mainly associated with pictures of cattle or sheep, a fact that earned him the epithet 'Cows Cooper'. Cooper collaborated between 1848 and 1856 with Frederick Richard Lee
Frederick Richard Lee
Frederick Richard Lee was the son of Thomas Lee of Barnstaple and brother of Thomas Lee , an architect.Frederick enrolled as a student in the Royal Academy on 16 January 1818, aged nineteen...

 R.A. on several paintings, Lee undertaking the landscapes, and Cooper adding animals to complete the scene.

Examples of Cooper's work include:
  • "Milking Time" (1834)
  • "A Summer's Noon" (1836)
  • "A Drover's Halt on the Fells"(1838)
  • "A Group in. the Meadows" (1845)
  • "Waterloo, the defeat of Kellerman's Cuirassiers" (1847)
  • "The Shepherd's Sabbath" (1866)
  • "Milking Time in the Meadow"
  • "The Monarch of the Meadows" (1873)
  • "Separated but not Divorced" (1874)
  • "Isaac's Substitute" (1880)
  • "Pushing off for Tilbury Fort"(1884)
  • "Cattle and Sheep in a Landscape"(1888)
  • "On a Farm in East Kent "(1889)
  • "Return to the Farm, Milking Time" (1897)


Cooper was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1845 and Royal Academician (RA) in 1867.

The largest public collection of Cooper paintings is owned by Canterbury City Council and housed at the Royal Museum and Art Gallery (Beaney Institute) in Canterbury. Examples are also held by the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

, London, and the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

, London, and other public collections, mainly in Britain.

Cooper was a great philanthropist in Canterbury, and used some of his wealth to build a number of Alms Houses for the poor in Chantry Lane in the centre of the city. Most notably in 1882 he developed his private art lessons into a full-fledged art school in Canterbury, located at his home and studio in St Peter's Street. Originally called the Canterbury Sidney Cooper School of Art, Cooper's art school is still in existence although it is now called the University of Creative Arts
Kent Institute of Art & Design
The Kent Institute of Art & Design was an art school based across three campuses in the county of Kent, in the United Kingdom. It was formed by the amalgamation of three independent colleges: Canterbury College of Art, Maidstone College of Art and Rochester College of Art...

. Amongst Cooper's more well-known students was Mary Tourtel
Mary Tourtel
Mary Tourtel was an English artist and creator of Rupert Bear.-Biography:Tourtel was born as Mary Caldwell and raised in an artistic family, daughter of a stained glass artist and stonemason. She studied art under Thomas Sidney Cooper at the Sidney Cooper School of Art in Canterbury, and became a...

, creator and illustrator of the Rupert Bear
Rupert Bear
Rupert Bear is a children's comic strip character, who features in a series of books based around his adventures. The character was created by the English artist Mary Tourtel and first appeared in the Daily Express on 8 November 1920. Rupert's initial purpose was to win sales from the rival...

 books for children.

Cooper wrote his reminiscences, under the title of My Life, in 1890.

External links

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