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Alfred Egerton Cooper

Alfred Ernest Egerton Cooper, 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.

Background
Cooper's maternal grandparents were Robert Speed (Foston 1811 – Lincoln 1863), whose portrait was painted by her grandson in 1901 when she was 95 years old. 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. 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. 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. and was cremated on 16 May 1974 at Putney Vale Cemetery. 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". == War service ==
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. In 1964 he had a cornea grafting operation to his right eye in Westminster Hospital. The First Snow, from the NS8 Airship over the Lammermuirs by Alfred Egerton Cooper.jpg|The First Snow, from the NS8 Airship over the Lammermuirs (1918), by Cooper 'r 34' and 'r 29' in the Shed at East Fortune Art.IWMART4086.jpg|'''r 34' and 'r 29' in the Shed at East Fortune'' (1919), by Cooper Airship 23 Art.IWMART1461 (border removed).jpg|Airship 23 (1919), by Cooper Scimitar icing tests by Alfred Egerton Cooper.jpg|Scimitar Icing Tests (1959), by Cooper == Career ==
Career
Training Cooper "painted on china at Worcester for four years before receiving any art training". He trained at the Royal School of Art, 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. 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 was a teacher at the Hammersmith School of Art. 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: 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 ==
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, 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", 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. 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 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. 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 ==
Exhibitions
Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition Cooper exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on at least 22 occasions, between 1911 and 1972. Some versions record or suggest 40 occasions. Cooper's 1921 submission to the RA was London From an Airship, "a notable feature" of the exhibition. In 1930 Cooper contributed a portrait of the actress Miss Norah Baring in dramatic pose. In 1933, he exhibited two oil paintings: Miss Jessica Tandy as Manuela in "Children in Uniform", which "won immediate success", and A Dorset Beach. The Tandy portrait was reproduced in various newspapers, and Cooper was photographed at his easel, in his studio with Tandy. In 1937, Cooper's contribution was a portrait, Marquess of Carisbrooke, "a resplendent figure in robes". In 1944 he exhibited his "massive" Derby Day, and his Dressing Table, "a lovely and attractive portrait". Cooper's 1950 contribution was The Dancer, a head-and-shoulders profile portrait in oils of the sitter in a balletic pose but wearing a jumper. In 1972 he contributed his last two paintings to the exhibition: the oil painting Dorset Beach again, and a watercolour The Life Class. In April 1934 at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Cooper exhibited his Derby Day Seventy-Seven Years After Frith painting, which was a tribute to the earlier work, William Powell Frith's Derby Day. In Cooper's painting, two bookies' stands are given the names of two of his artist friends, Philip Connard and Adrian Scott Stokes: a "leg pull" which amused other artists. Cooper said, "Both are friends of mine, and I thought it would be rather a lark to put their names on the canvas. Now the other members of the club are having a great time at their expense". His portrait of Winston Churchill, later named Profile for Victory, was hung in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1943; the Tatler said that it was the "first profile portrait to be exhibited of the Prime Minister". At the United Artists' exhibition at the Royal Academy galleries at Burlington House, 1940, Cooper showed The Model and the Mirror, featuring a female nude with 1940s hairstyle in classical pose with a mirror. In 1942 an exhibition dedicated to Cooper was held in the Wolsey Suite of Bentalls department store at Kingston upon Thames. In 1953, Cooper showed his watercolour scene, Palace Pier, Brighton, at the RW3 Galleries in Conduit Street, London. For the Royal Society of British Artists summer exhibition of 1953, Cooper contributed a painting titled Summer, showing a blonde female nude standing by a river. In 1955 an ad hoc exhibition at the Six Bells pub, Chelsea, included a work by Cooper. In 1964 he exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition at 195 Piccadilly. In 1974, shortly after Cooper died, a memorial display of twelve of his "striking canvases" was exhibited at Chelsea Art Society's 28th show at the Chenil Galleries in Chelsea. Cooper had been president of the Society for "many years", and his wife Irene became president after him. Cooper also exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, The Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI), the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Manchester Art Gallery, and the Royal Society of Arts. == Collections ==
Collections
National Portrait Gallery, London: Sir Barnes Wallis (1942), John Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara (1958), Winston Churchill Collotype print (1942). • Imperial War Museum (WM), London: Airship 9 (1918), Airship 23 (1918), Rigid 26 (1918), R.34 and R.29 in the Shed at East Fortune (1919), At the IWM Duxford there are seven of Cooper's "pictures from the air". ''Lord Mayor's Banquet in the Guildhall, London, 1963, Sir Rupert de la Bôre (1893–1978), Lord Mayor of London (1952), The Pool of London'' (1913), • Parliamentary Art Collection: The Lying-in-State of Winston Churchill in Westminster Hall, 1965, • Royal Air Force Museum: Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Portal (1893–1971) (1943), Battle of Britain pilot Group Captain Clair Grece, DFC, MA (Oxon) (1945), Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (1887–1979) (1964), Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Portal (1893–1971) (c.1945), R34, East Fortune, Scotland (1919), Right Honourable Lord Brabazon of Tara (1884–1964), President of St Andrews Golf Glub (1958). • Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery: Frederic Wood Jones (1958), John Thomas Quekett (1815–1861) (1961) (copy after Elizabeth Walker), Charles Stewart (1840–1907) (1962), Sir Cuthbert Wallace (1867–1944) (copy after George Harcourt). • Christ's Hospital: Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir Barnes Wallis, Sir Barnes Wallis (1887–1979) (1930), headmistress of Girl's School of Christ's Hospital 1921 Miss Norah Cicely Craig, HRH Henry Duke of Gloucester Receiving His Charge as President, 14 April 1937 (1937), Miss D. West, Reverend Richard Lee, Headmaster, president of BSB charity at Christ's Hospital 1938 Charles Wilfred Thompson (1950s), President of BSB Joseph James Brown (1937). • Wolverhampton Art Gallery: First mayor of Bilston Herbert Beach (1933), Ascot, the Paddock (before 1945), Lady in Red Velvet (before 1937), Mayor of Bilston Walter Martin Hughes (1937), Mayor of Bilston T. R. Wood (1927), Cooper's maternal grandmother Mrs Robert Speed at the Age of 95 (1901), Bilston town clerk Joseph Lewis Arlidge (before 1930). • University of Reading: Frances Evelyn (1861–1938), Countess of Warwick (1954) (copy after John Singer Sargent). • National Horseracing Museum: Grey Manus in Stables (1938). • National Gallery of British Sports and Pastimes (owned by Walter Victor Hutchinson): The painting Derby Day, Epsom, 1933, also known as Derby Day Seventy-Seven Years After Frith (1933), was in this collection as of 1950. • Cranfield University collection: London From an Airship (1919). • Minneapolis Institute of Art: Winston Churchill (1942). • Other collections: "Several of Mr, Cooper's pictures have been bought by public bodies, including the Governments of Canada, South Africa, and India". == Institutions ==
Institutions
For many years, Cooper was president of Chelsea Art Society. He was at one time president of Brighton Art Club. which was founded in 1954. Cooper and his son were members of the Carlton Club. == Reviews ==
Reviews
• In 1927 Cooper's contribution to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, titled Venus and Cupid, was reproduced in colour in The Sphere. The newspaper described it as, "a curiously modern treatment of the Cytherean".The Sphere, 6 August 1927. • For the 1929 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Cooper contributed The Judgment of Paris, " a singularly pleasing treatment of a conventional if not hackneyed theme by an artist whose aviation pictures made a great name for him".The Sphere, 11 May 1929. • In 1933, three of his portraits from his one-man show at the Leger Galleries, Bond Street, London, were reproduced in The Sphere. They were, There it Goes, Ann Todd in The Water Gypsies and The Sketcher on the Cliff. The newspaper captioned them as follows: "Three of the outstanding canvases at this distinguished artist's one-man show at the Leger Galleries, Old Bond Street, an exhibition in which his great talent is seen at its versatile best. All these 1932 pictures show a remarkable sense of action and atmosphere".The Sphere, 7 January 1933. • For The Sphere newspaper in 1935, Cooper produced a painting of a stretch of the Thames: ''The King's Capital, from Westiminster to St Paul's''. The picture's caption demonstrates the amount of detail typically included by Cooper, and it also captures a 1930s glimpse of London, where the urban landscape is constantly changing. :: "This reach of the Thames is one of the finest prospects in London, and one that, owing to extensive building development, has changed considerably during the post-war years. No artist is better qualified to convey such a scene to canvas than Mr A. Egerton Cooper, and this reproduction from a recently-completed painting by him does full justice to a subject which demands the exercise of skill of a very high order. Mr Cooper established his easel at the top of the tower of the new building of Messrs. W. H. Smith and Son on the Albert Embankment, and every afternoon for nine days climbed to the summit with his painting paraphernalia up four almost perpendicular iron ladders. Fortunately he enlisted the sympathy of the resident engineer, and the canvas itself was hauled up by a rope; otherwise the artist might never have been able to accomplish his task. Mr Cooper was also fortunate with regard to the weather which, for March, was unusually fine and clear. Even so, the horizon played hide and seek in remarkable fashion, and St Paul's, which, because of the bend in the river, appears to have moved over to the Surrey side, was visible only twice during the whole time he was at work. :: "On the left of the new Lambeth Bridge can be seen a section of the imposing block of office buildings that has done so much to improve the Millbank district, and on the right of the bridge is Lambeth Palace, for 600 years the residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. The massive red-brick entrance gateway to the palace, which is known as Morton's Tower, was erected in 1490 by Cardinal Morton – the adviser of Henry VII, who achieved such notoriety with his device for extracting extortionate taxes from rich and poor. On the right is the gateway of the parish church of St Mary, which although rebuilt in 1851, still retains its beautiful fifteenth-century tower. Behind these buildings is St Thomas' Hospital while, facing it on the other side of the river and, dominating the whole scene, are the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey – those stately piles that epitomise the dignity and grace of London's architecture. Beyond, almost on the skyline, are some of the modern concrete edifices that of recent years have risen between Charing Cross and old Waterloo Bridge".The Sphere, 11 May 1935. • In 1936, Cooper submitted his Paddock at the Pony Races – A Summer Meeting at Northolt Park, to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It was reproduced in The Sphere, which captioned it: "The gay colours of the jockeys and the impression of bright sunshine give the picture a pleasing air of gaiety and vitality. Mr Cooper's work is well known to readers of The Sphere".The Sphere, 2 May 1936. The same picture was also reproduced as a two-page spread, under the title, Get Up Please! The Paddock at Northolt Park, in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, which said, "Mr Egerton Cooper's masterly studies of Epsom and other courses are as well known as his portraits, and his exhibitions at the Leger Gallery are always well patronised".Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 15 May 1936. • In 1942, Cooper exhibited his portrait The Australian at the Royal Academy United Artists Exhibition at Worthing's Art Gallery. The West Sussex Gazette said it was a "noble study ... by A. Egerton Cooper, virile in both composition and colouring".West Sussex Gazette, 1 October 1942. • In 1943, The Scotsman included the following in an article about the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of that year: "Portrait of the Prime Minister. It is difficult not to call Mr Egerton Cooper's portrait of the Prime Minister the picture of the year. The man of the hour seems to claim that distinction almost automatically; but looked at dispassionately it is merely one of a number of excellent portraits. Mr Churchill is seen in profile possibly because the artist thought of a good title: Profile for Victory. We see a man of great determination, conscious of a great task still to he performed, and ready to carry it through to the end. The expression is not especially grim. It is interesting to compare this portrait with the head in bronze of Mr Churchill by Sir W. Reid Dick, which is among the best exhibits in the Sculpture Gallery".The Scotsman, 1 May 1943. • "Sporting canvas by Mr A. Egerton Cooper, in the exhibition of his works in the Grafton Street Galleries of Messrs Ellis and Smith. The number of well-known turf personalities identified on this painting give added interest to its wealth of colour and detail. Mr Cooper is a portrait painter of distinction, and his brilliant profile of the Rt. Hon. Mr. Winston Churchill, which attracted a great deal of attention at the Royal Academy of 1943 has been loaned to this show. This versatile artist, equally expert in the handling of flower studies as open-air subjects of a sporting flavour, has a number of such works both in oils and water-colour on view. The exhibitions of Messrs. Ellis and Smith in the past have been mainly devoted to the paintings by the old masters, and this changeover to contemporary work is for the special benefit of the South London Hospital for Women and Children. This hospital has set out to raise a sum of £100,000 () in the course of the next seven years. Mr Egerton Cooper has donated a framed canvas for sale to the highest tender, to be painted with a subject of the purchaser's choice". Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 22 June 1945. (Note: Cooper was photographed at that exhibition, with his portrait of Churchill). == Cooper in popular culture ==
Cooper in popular culture
Some scenes in the film, The Dam Busters, were shot in 1954 in the house of Cooper's friend Barnes Wallis. Pictures by Cooper can be seen hanging in the rooms. == Notes ==
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