Cows by a River

Cooper trained at the Royal Academy Schools from 1823 and subsequently moved to Brussels, where he met Eugène Verboeckhoven (1798 - 1881), who introduced him to the work of seventeenth-century Dutch animal painters such as Aelbert Cuyp (1620 - 1691) and Paulus Potter (1625 - 1654). Following this meeting Cooper began to specialise in paintings of cattle and sheep.