Description
Alfred Heaton Cooper was among the first of many Victorian painters to illustrate the natural beauty of the Lake District landscape. Born in 1864, Alfred grew up in Bolton where his parents were mill workers. They made many sacrifices to provide a good education for their children and it soon became clear that Alfred had a talent for art.
A safe position as a clerk at Bolton Town Hall soon palled and encouraged by his mother, Alfred won a scholarship to Westminster School of Art, where he came under the influence of the Barbizon School and in particular the works of Diez, Rousseau, Millet and Boudin.
His love of the natural world together with his search for saleable objects took him first to the Norwegian fjords, then a popular resort for wealthy Victorian tourists, where he fell in love and married the local dyers daughter.
This began a prolific painting career, based finally in the English Lake District. His paintings of that beautiful scenery are still much sought after and many reproductions of them are sold each year. He also illustrated many of the popular A & C Black tourist guidebooks to Britain and Europe, but despite his success as an artist, his work brought little financial reward in his lifetime.
However, Alfred's life was the inspiration and foundation for a unique family painting tradition in the English Lakes, now in its third generation.
Jane Renouf is well regarded as an author, journalist and as a regular contributor to The Westmorland Gazette. As a co-founder-member of the of Ambleside Oral History Group in 1976, she has recorded the memories of many elderly people in Lakeland, including Alfred's son, William Heaton Cooper. Listening to William's recollections of his father and their family life has put her in a unique position to write a first biography of Alfred, one of Lakeland's most popular landscape artists.
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