Alfred Ernest Egerton Cooper (5 July 1883 – 11 May 1974), RBA, ARCA, was a British painter of portraits, landscapes and other figurative work. In the era of Modernism, he continued to work in traditional style from his studio in Chelsea, London.

Cooper was an artist of modest origins who attended the Royal Academy Schools then became a scholarship student at the Royal College of Art. He lost most of the sight of one eye due to chlorine gas in the First World War. However, as the war ended, he was promoted to captain and official war artist of the RAF. After producing military paintings of aircraft and RAF personnel, he went on to paint King George VI, Winston Churchill and Barnes Wallis, besides various earls and other worthies. He was a teacher of art, he restored old paintings, and he produced sporting pictures, murals and paintings for illustrated newspapers. He took part in the painting event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics. His work is held in numerous collections, such as the National Portrait Gallery, the Imperial War Museum, the Guildhall Art Gallery and the Parliamentary Art Collection.

Cooper was married with one son and lived most of his life in London, where he was president of Chelsea Art Society. He was said to be "one of Chelsea's oldest and best-loved artists".

Background Cooper's maternal grandparents were Robert Speed (Foston 1811 – Lincoln 1863), a stocktaker (employee who takes inventory) at the ironworks, and his wife Sarah Hannah "Annie" or "Ann" née Jones (Heighington 17 January 1810 – Elkesley 2 October 1911), whose portrait was painted by her grandson in 1901 when she was 95 years old. Robert and Annie married in 1858. Annie had twelve children, forty grandchildren and about fifty great-grandchildren. She was still active outdoors in her 102nd year. Cooper's paternal grandparents were Thomas Cooper, a police officer, and Mary née Edwards. His father was Alfred John Cooper (born 12 February 1857), a railway clerk; later a political agent and relieving officer from Coven, Staffordshire. His mother was school mistress Sarah Hannah Sturges Speed (26 July 1859 – 1896/1897), and his parents married at Trinity Chapel, Wolverhampton, on 19 June 1882. His sister was Winifred Mary Cooper (1886–1936), born in Wolverhampton, as was her mother.1891 England Census RG12/2230 p.9, schedule 108, 33 Walpole Street, Wolverhampton

Alfred Ernest Egerton "Fred" Cooper, was born on 5 July 1883, in Tettenhall in the West Midlands. He lived in Cumberland until he began as a pupil of Durham School.

In 1920 when Cooper married Irene Florence Clements (21 July 1893 – Chelsea 1989), Barnes Wallis was his best man. In 1973, Sir Barnes Wallis returned to Cooper's Chelsea studio for their golden wedding anniversary. Cooper was nicknamed "Peter the Painter" by his father-in-law, and his friends then followed suit, calling him "Peter" thereafter. Cooper and his wife had a son Peter C. Cooper (born 1925), who married and moved to the United States, and they visited him on eight occasions during the 1960s. Peter Cooper became an artist, and the director of the Grosse Pointe Art Gallery, Detroit, Michigan.

On Twelfth Night 1947 at Monte Carlo's Sporting Club, a party was held for a number of celebrities; Cooper and his wife Irene were photographed there. In 1951, they were living at 12 Jubilee Place, London S.W.3. That year they took ship from Colombo, Ceylon, to London, Cooper having executed paintings in Ceylon, including A Ceylonese Lady. Due to redevelopment, Cooper and his wife were obliged to move from Jubilee Place, so they came to Oakley Gardens, Chelsea, in 1970.

Cooper died at home at 4 Oakley Gardens, Chelsea, London, on 11 May 1974, and was cremated on 16 May 1974 at Putney Vale Cemetery. He left £4,434 ().

Character

Cooper was described in The Times as "a generous man of great charm, a wonderful raconteur and well known to a wide circle of people in the art world". According to his son, Peter, Cooper "generally looked more like a retired British colonel than an artist, and always dressed to the nines, even in his studio". In 1922, the Daily Mirror quoted his opinion on Modernism:

The Chelsea News and General Advertiser said that Cooper was "one of Chelsea's oldest and best loved artists".

War service

During the First World War, Cooper served in the Artists Rifles (28th County of London Battalion), and then was commissioned as a captain on the staff of the RAF. Chlorine gas permanently damaged the sight of his right eye, so that he almost lost his sight, although he could still draw and differentiate colour. After his eye injury he became a war artist, "recording airships and views from them". Cooper became an official artist to the RAF by 1917, riding in various aircraft and taking aerial photographs. "He became an expert in the art and technique of large scale aerial camouflage, sketching and painting landscapes from a variety of aircraft".

During the Second World War, Cooper was producing newspaper illustrations of theatres of war, taking his information from photographs. In 1964 he had a cornea grafting operation to his right eye in Westminster Hospital.

Career

Training

Cooper "painted on china at Worcester for four years before receiving any art training". He attended art school in the West Midlands and at Bilston School of Art, where "he won a Staffordshire Scholarship and five King's Prizes in one year". By the time he was seventeen, Cooper was describing himself as an artist/painter working from home,1901 England Census RG13/2690 p.14, 74 Broad Street, Bilston, Wolverhampton. He trained at the Royal School of Art, from which he graduated in 1911. Having attained a Staffordshire county scholarship, in 1911 he became a student at the Royal College of Art (RCA) where he gained his diploma, and then taught there. By 1908 he had moved to Jubilee Place in Chelsea. So in 1911 the Census finds him as an art student aged 26, lodging in the West Kensington home of his uncle Thomas Millard, a jeweller's assistant.1911 England Census, 11 Gratton Road, West Kensington. During his student years, Cooper was working for around twelve months in the studio of John Singer Sargent, filling in details and also backgrounds in Sargent's works. After leaving the RCA, "he was for a time employed by a decorative firm, and painted altar pieces and tapestries and restored old masters.

Occupation

Cooper said that John Singer Sargent, under whom he trained for a while, was his "greatest influence". Sargent was an Impressionist, and in 2012 Christie's categorised Cooper's work as impressionist. Cooper painted in gouache, oil on canvas and watercolour. He painted "a wide range of subjects from portraits to scenes on salmon rivers and views from airships". He also painted some "fine landscapes"; some of them were of the south coast of England, and he was "well known for his mural decorations". He was a teacher at the Hammersmith School of Art. He competed in the arts competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics, where his subjects included salmon rivers and horse racing.

Cooper's studio base between around 1920 and 1970 was in Glebe Place, Chelsea, London, close to his home in Oakley Gardens. Due to Cooper's preference for figurative art, he was finding it difficult to sell paintings by 1970, so he threw open his studio to the public between 24 February and 7 March 1970. The Daily Mirror reported:

In 1922, Cooper and artists Thomas Eyre Macklin and Alfred Praga were chosen by the Daily Mirror to judge its youth beauty competition. Two artists' models were photographed demonstrating their costumes for the Chelsea Arts Club Ball at the Albert Hall on New Year's Eve 1930, in Cooper's studio. In 1949, Cooper was executing "many brilliant restorations" of old paintings for John Laviers Wheatley, director of Walter Victor Hutchinson's Gallery of British Sports and Pastimes at Hutchinson House, Stratford Place, London. In 1961, Cooper, as president of Chelsea Art Society, formally welcomed Pietro Annigoni to the studio above his own, in Glebe Place. In 1972, John Dunn of BBC Radio 2 recorded a one-and-a-half-hour interview at the Glebe Place studio, in which Cooper talked about "artists and his own life". It was broadcast in early August 1972. Cooper continued to work at his studio, almost until the end of his life at age 90.

Selected works

Portraits

In 1933, Cooper's portrait of Blue Eyes, featuring a blonde woman with 1920s bob and flapper necklace, was reproduced in The Sphere newspaper. In 1940, Cooper executed portraits of King George VI in his naval uniform and as Colonel of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, besides "countless earls". The George VI paintings now hang in the Cavalry Barracks, Hounslow and the Sea Cadets' Barracks. Cooper painted aldermen and recorders, plus three Lord Mayors of London, some scientists, and Barnes Wallis. As a staff captain and official artist for the RAF, Cooper painted official portraits of various British military personnel.

Portraits of Churchill

Cooper produced five portraits of Churchill altogether. In 1943, Cooper painted the profile of Winston Churchill for the Junior Carlton Club. It became his "best known portrait", and later gained the title Profile for Victory after being "reproduced during the war in large numbers", and being hung in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of that year. According to his son Peter, Cooper "considered this to be his finest work". In 1948 he produced a drawing of Churchill. In 1950 another painting of Churchill by Cooper was unveiled at the Junior Carlton Club, by Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, in the presence of Lord Portal, Lord Cunningham, Lord Ismay, Anthony Eden and Randolph Churchill. (Includes news photos of Cooper and VIPs at the dinner, and the unveiling.) The painting showed "Mr Churchill sitting in evening dress with decorations and holding a cigar before the model of a sailing ship". That painting is now at the Carlton Club at 69 St James Street, London. In 1955 he painted Sir Winston Churchill seated in the garden at Chartwell "in the English tradition of Reynolds and Zoffany". It was hung in the library at Lloyd's of London, and then in the Lloyd's building at 51 Lime Street, London. In early January 1965 Cooper completed "the last portrait of Churchill"; that is, the last portrait that Churchill sat for. He said, "I used tempera. Churchill insisted on seeing every stroke painted. We had to fix up a mirror so he could watch me working". The painting was completed three days before Churchill had his final stroke. That 1965 portrait now hangs in the Cadbury Schweppes building at 25 Berkeley Square, London.

Scenes and landscapes

Paintings for newspapers and magazines

In 1935, Cooper painted the scene inside Westminster Hall, at the Silver Jubilee of George V; it was "specially drawn for The Sphere" newspaper, and was printed as a double-page spread. In the same month he executed two pictures for the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (ISDN) titled The Morning of Derby Day showing "gypsies resting on the grass after putting the finishing touches to their booths", and An Alfresco Breakfast showing "gypsies taking their morning meal in the open on the day of the great race". In 1936 he painted An Ascot Finish for a two-page spread in ISDN. In 1938 he produced a picture of Sport and Duty: Ascot 1937 for ISDN, which printed half of it.

Exhibitions

Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition