William Heaton Cooper

William Heaton Cooper was an English landscape artist who worked predominantly in watercolours. He was born in Coniston in the English Lake District on 6 October 1903 as the third child to Norwegian mother, Mathilde, and the landscape artist Alfred Heaton Cooper.

His paintings are mostly of Lake District landscapes and are of an impressionistic style.

He died in 1995 and is buried in Grasmere in the Lake District.

He decided to follow in his fathers footsteps,(Alfred Heaton Cooper).painting landscapes in the lake district and exhibiting his work in his studio. The Heaton Cooper studio was originally in Ambleside. Construction was started in the year of 1905, then when William took over after his father's death. In 1938 William decided to move the studio to Grasmere which also became the family home, where the family business continues to thrive to this day.

William Heaton Cooper was the third child of the landscape artist Alfred Heaton Cooper, of Bolton, Lancashire and his wife Mathilde, from Norway. He was born at Coniston, in the English Lake District in October 1903. Alfred lived entirely by his painting and William soon aspired to follow in his father's footsteps. He gained a scholarship to the Royal Academy School in London and subsequently exhibited at the Royal Academy, the RBA and the Royal Institute. Alongside his painting, he became an authority on the lore and landscape of the Lake District, walking and rock climbing in its mountains with the pioneer climbers of the 1920s. There can have been few men of his time with a better knowledge of the Lakeland fells, their structure and their geography. This knowledge is apparent from his books on Lakeland and his illustration of the rock climbing guides published by the Fell & Rock Climbing Club, of which he was elected life president. He was elected in 1953 to membership of the Royal Institute of British Watercolourists and was for eleven years president of the Lake Artists Society. At the time of his father's death in 1929, William was living in the south of England in an experimental commune, which was home to a variety of people with artistic talents and was a source of inspiration for him. He was however forced to leave this pleasant Bohemian lifestyle and take over the studio in Ambleside which his father had built, in order to provide for his mother and younger sister. A period of intense unhappiness followed during which a search for inner peace and integrity led him on a religious quest, culminating in his adoption of the doctrines of the Oxford Movement (Moral Rearmament). The strength of his sincere belief in the tenets of this movement led him to ignore the more contentious side of its dogma. He decided that he would hand over control of his whole life to God. He claimed that this included a commitment even to give up painting if God so wished. He remained convinced that this decision enabled him to find it in himself to love, and always referred to the moment as his 'release'. His painting continued to improve, so much so that he soon eclipsed the reputation of his father. A decision was taken to move the studio business to Grasmere and the building of a home and studio there began in 1938. In the same year he met the sculptress, Ophelia Gordon Bell, who later became his wife.

It was after World War 2, in which William served as a camouflage officer, that the idea of reproduction sales occurred. For many years William, like Alfred before him, had needed to produce a constant output of original paintings to earn a living. The advent of improved colour printing techniques meant that more faithful reproductions of originals could be made and though the idea of selling mere copies was new and suspect, William went ahead. His instinct was right, literally thousands of prints being sold over the ensuing years. In terms of these reproduction sales, William must be one of the best selling artists of all time.

William's style of mountain painting is more impresssionistic than his father's, with his knowledge of geology used to the full in his sometimes spare and skeletal depiction of crags and fells. He was fascinated by the ever changing light of Lakeland, with views seldom looking twice alike. His most spectacular pictures were obtained in the light of evening or dawn, to which end he would walk miles over the fells, camping out to capture the late or early glows over fell tops and lakes. The result has been a body of work which continues to give pleasure to thousands of visitors to the English Lakes. Likewise his books on the area continue to delight the Lakeland enthusiast.

His legacy is not simply in his art. Through his painting he manages to suggest the deep spirituality with which he regarded his life and work. The spare and deceptively simple renderings of Lakeland landscapes reflect the simplicity of his belief, whilst revealing the depth of his knowledge.

William died in 1995 and is buried in Grasmere. Obituaries in the Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph paid tribute to his outstanding contribution to landscape art.