3527 - Cooper, Thomas Sidney

Cooper, Thomas Sidney (1803, Canterbury – 1902, Vernon Holme). Mountainous Landscape with Sheep. Oil on canvas, with relining at the edges. Signed and dated 1877. 91.7 x 71 cm. Framed. Well-known English animal painter, member of the Royal Academy; his paintings are in numerous public collections in England). - Cooper showed great artistic talent even as a boy, but his family could not afford to pay for his education. So, as a child, he began working as a “coach painter” and as a painter of stage sets for traveling theater troupes. In his early twenties, he moved to London and sketched at the British Museum until he was finally admitted to the Royal Academy. However, the high cost of living in London forced him to return to Canterbury to work as an art teacher. In 1827, he traveled with a friend to Brussels, where he not only met his wife Charlotte but also the prominent animal painter Eugène Joseph Verboeckhoven, under whom Cooper studied and who would always have a major influence on his work. The Coopers returned to London in 1830 due to the Belgian Revolution. There, beginning in 1833, Thomas Sidney exhibited regularly and with growing success at the Royal Academy and became a sought-after animal and landscape painter. - Our painting depicts one of his most popular subjects—sheep, which he depicted most frequently alongside cattle. The small flock of adult animals and a few lambs rests in a mountainous landscape near a lake, much like the scenes he likely saw on his travels with his son through Scotland and the Lake District. A few heavy rain clouds darken the sky, but this does not seem to bother the animals, whose light-colored coats catch the last rays of the sun.- With subtle retouching.