ButtonWillowCottage

Sheep Grazing, mid-winter

 

Thomas Sidney Cooper

1803-1902

Born in Canterbury, Kent, Thomas Sidney Cooper showed artistic promise even as a small child.  He always had artistic inclinations, but his family circumstances did not allow him to receive any training.  By age 12 he was working as a coach painter, and then obtained an additional job as a scene painter.  He continued to desire the goal of being an artist full time and all his spare moments were spent drawing and painting from nature.  At twenty he went to London and drew for awhile in the British Museum.  He was finally recognized and admitted to Royal Academy.

Cooper was most known for his paintings depicting cattle and farm animals.  So much so, that it earned him the descriptive nickname "Cattle Cooper".

In later life he was known as a great philanthropist, using his personal wealth to build many "Alms Houses" for the poor.  Later he turned his private lessons into a full-fledged art school which is still open today under the name University of Creative Arts.

 

White Cottage in Autumn

J. Woodhull Adams

1854-1921

"Despite his artistic accomplishments, Woodhull Adams biography remains a bit of a mystery. He was in Old Lyme by 1912...Adams exhibited with the Lyme Art Association from 1917 to 1922. He became a resident of the town at some point and was living there when he died in 1921. He is known to have painted at Monhegan Island in Maine as part of Robert Henri’s circle there. He exhibited once at the National Academy of Design, in 1886, and he was a member of the prestigious Salmagundi Club in New York, which had many well-known artist members. Otherwise he seems to have kept so low a profile that it is not known where he studied art, how he came to be an artist, or even what his first name was. Its initial was J, but he seems always to have signed his art with his middle and last names."

Florence Griswold Museum