Thomas Sidney Cooper was an English landscape painter noted for his images of cattle and farm animals, a fact that earned him the epithet 'Cow Cooper'. Cooper collaborated between 1847 and 1870 with Frederick Richard Lee R.A. on several paintings, Lee undertaking the landscapes, and Cooper adding animals to complete the scene. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and Royal Academician on 1867. The oldest member of the Royal Academy of Arts at the time of the accession of King Edward VII in 1901, Cooper was in July 1901 received by the King in audience, and appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. He wrote his reminiscences, under the title of My Life, in 1890. The largest public collection of Cooper paintings is owned by Canterbury City Council and housed at the Royal Museum and Art Gallery in Canterbury. Examples are also held by the Tate Gallery, London, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and other public collections, mainly in Britain.
