Sidney Cooper – one of the most famous artists of the Victorian era
Born in Canterbury in 1803, Cooper was a self taught artist with a hard start in life. But by the time of his death in 1902, a rich and famous Royal Academician, his landscape paintings hung on walls all over the country and he had painted for Queen Victoria.
His greatest legacy to the people of Canterbury is the art school and gallery that he founded, and that he bqueathed to the city in 1868.
From poverty to fame and a funeral at Canterbury Cathedral
Thomas Sidney Cooper CVO RA was an English landscape painter from Canterbury, famous for his landscapes with images of cattle and farm animals, many of which were painted in and around Canterbury.
He was born in 1803, in a first-floor room of a house in St Peter’s Street (High Street), Canterbury and baptised at the neighbouring St Peter’s Church. Self-taught, he rose from poverty to become a Royal Academician, friends with Landseer, Frederick Leighton, Maclise, William Morris and others.
In his last years he was a household name, as famous as Constable and Landseer, and his deteriorating health towards the end was a national concern, reported in newspapers, one of which referred to him as the ‘grand old man of art’.
He died in 1902 aged 98 years. His funeral was held in Canterbury Cathedral; people lined the streets and flags were flown at half-mast as his coffin was borne from the home he had built in Harbledown, Vernon Holme (now the home of Kent College Junior School). He is buried in St Martin’s churchyard, Canterbury.
Cooper and his first wife Charotte had four children; his son, Thomas George Cooper, also became an artist. Twenty years after his first wife died Cooper married Mary Cannon from Canterbury and had another son, Nevill.
Cooper wrote his reminiscences, under the title of My Life, in 1890. Among many fascinating anecdotes, he recalls fleeing the fighting in Brussels when the Belgian Revolution broke out, his meetings with JMW Turner, with Charles Dickens and his commission by Queen Victoria to paint her prize bull.
Cooper was a great philanthropist in Canterbury, and used some of his wealth to help the poor in the city. He loved the theatre and in 1856 bought a block of buildings on Guildhall Street and, drawing on his early work experience as a scenery painter, designed a new theatre for Canterbury. His great friend Charles Dickens, who gave a reading there, praised the design saying ‘Why Cooper, I have not had to make the slightest effort to send my voice even to the back seats of the gallery’.
In 1868 he purchased the house where he had been born, adding substantially to it to create the Sidney Cooper Gallery and Art School to provide the tuition that he had never been able to afford. In 1882 he handed the gallery and school over to the city on the condition that it be used for artistic purposes. It is this building that the Sidney Cooper Research Group/Arts Trust wishes to reopen.
The largest public collection of Cooper paintings is owned by Canterbury City Council and housed at the Beaney House of Art & Knowledge in Canterbury. There is a permanent gallery devoted to his work on the ground floor – and visitors will be familiar with the striking sight of ‘Charlie the Bull’ (otherwise known as Divorced but not Separated’ facing as they come in.
Examples if his work are also held by the Tate Gallery, London, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and other public collections, mainly in Britain.
His sensibility for nature, landscape, and the animals in it, has left us a large and recognisable body of work that spans 80 years, closest in style to the Dutch Old Masters. Seen through the lens of today, the work may look whimsical or nostalgic but at the time it was groundbreaking.
The definitive account of his life and catalogue of his work ‘Thomas Sidney Cooper – His Life and Work’, by Kenneth Westwood was published in two volumes in 2011 by David Leathers, Ilminster. Used copies of the books can be purchased here.
A paperback by Brian Stewart (1983) Thomas Sidney Cooper of Canterbury celebrates Cooper’s life and legacy to Canterbury. The publisher, Meresborough, no longer exists however second hand books can be purchased online.
New paperback editions of Thomas Sidney Cooper’s ‘My Life’ (originally published in 1890) can be found online.
