COOPER, Abraham

English animal and battle painter. His life spans the great years of sporting painting: when he was born, Stubbs was establishing his reputation as the greatest of English painters; when he died, Landseer was retiring from painting. His work thus spans both the greatest of the Georgian and the best of the Victorian, and he has a place of especial honour amongst the sporting painters of this Golden Age.

Cooper showed an early aptitude for drawing and at the age of 13 he went to work for his uncle, William Davis, who was then manager of Astley’s Circus; a circus famous for its spectacular equestrian dramas, providing the boy with the opportunity to study horses at first hand. After Cooper set about painting a portrait of a horse which he had often ridden, William Davis secured for his nephew a place in the studio of the celebrated horse-painter Ben Marshall, where he received instruction and was introduced to prospective patrons. He also studied and copied illustrations in The Sporting Magazine and became a contributor himself in 1811 with the portrait of a pointer.

Cooper was prolific: 189 of his paintings were engraved for The Sporting Magazine; he sent 332 paintings to the Royal Academy beginning in 1812, and another 87 to other London Exhibition venues. He was amongst the most popular painters of equine and canine portraiture, with an exalted clientele. He was popularly known as the “English Horace Vernet”.

The vigour of his drawing is rooted in the classical age to which he was born, but the high and lustrous “finish” on his paintings presages the work of Herring (who was his pupil), Landseer and the high Victorians.