T.S. Cooper, Again!

Thomas Sidney Cooper (September 26, 1803 - February 7, 1902) was an English painter noted for his images of cattle and farm animals.

Cooper was born at Canterbury, Kent, 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, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy.

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; but four years later he returned to London to live, and by showing his first picture at the Royal Academy (1833) began an unprecedentedly prolonged career as an exhibitor. Cooper's name is mainly associated with pictures of cattle or sheep, a fact that earned him the epithet 'Cows Cooper'. Cooper collaborated with Frederick Richard Lee R.A. on several paintings, Lee undertaking the landscapes, and Cooper adding animals to complete the scene.