Life and Work
Cooper was born in Manchester, England - one of six children to millworker parents - and brought up in nearby Bolton, Lancashire. After leaving school, he worked as a clerk but moved to London in 1884 to study art under George Clausen. He finished his studies prematurely to embark on a period of travelling, first north to Yorkshire, then abroad to Morocco and finally settling in Norway. Whilst in Norway, he became fascinated by the rural lifestyle of the Sogne region, where he eventually set up a studio beside the fjord at Balestrand. There, he married Mathilde.
After realising that he could not make a living in the area, he returned in 1894 to Bolton, moving eventually to the Lake District where he believed there was a market for his work amongst visiting tourists. He shipped his log cabin studio from Norway to Coniston and later to Ambleside. In 1903, Mathilde gave birth to William Heaton Cooper, who would also go on to become a landscape artist.
Apart from his watercolours of the Lake District, and scenes of Norwegian fjords (especially Balestrand), Cooper also provided illustrations for many travel guidebooks published by A & C Black.
He died in the Lake District in 1929. The family business he founded still exists today as an art gallery and shop in Grasmere, Cumbria.
Read more about this topic: Alfred Heaton Cooper
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or work:
“I sometimes have the sense that I live my life as a writer with my nose pressed against the wide, shiny plate glass window of the “mainstream” culture. The world seems full of straight, large-circulation, slick periodicals which wouldn’t think of reviewing my book and bookstores which will never order it.”
—Jan Clausen (b. 1943)
“Bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; one will transform and blend them to make a work that is all one’s own, that is, one’s judgement. Education, work, and study aim only at forming this.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)