THOMAS SIDNEY COOPER Lot n° 189

Canterbury, 1803 - Harbledown, 1902 Midday Rest Signed T Sidney at lower left Oil on canvas, 100X150 cm Bears cartouche on back with title, author's name and date 1899. Provenance: Italy, private collection Thomas Sidney Cooper was one of the most important animal painters of the Victorian period, his favorite subjects being cattle and sheep within the landscapes of his native county in Kent and North Wales. Cooper attended the Royal Academy Schools before taking a teaching position in Brussels, where he befriended the great Belgian painter Verboeckhoven, who strongly influenced his style. In 1831 the artist settled in London and exhibited his first painting in Suffolk Street in 1833. He later exhibited forty-eight works at the British Institution between 1833 and 1863, and his Landscape with Cattle remained on display at the Royal Academy continuously from 1833 to 1902, a record for an exhibition at the Royal Academy. The large painting in the catalog depicts four cows, with a dappled coat, resting in the shade of leafy trees. On the right side, the fence of a corral can be glimpsed, while, on the left, the landscape opens onto a deep space, with more animals and the outline of a village in the distance, under an intensely cloudy sky. Thomas Sidney Cooper's pictorial mastery is evident, as always, in the luminous effects produced by the reflections of light on the animals' fur, giving them a solid realistic texture and, at the same time, a bucolic figurative atmosphere. The work is accompanied by expertise by Fernando Noris. Reference bibliography: E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres, Paris 2010, ad vocem C. Wood, Dictionary of Victorian Painters, sl, sd, ad vocem