Biography
John Albert Cooper (b. Bolton, Lancashire, UK 1894 - d. Menston-in-Wharfdale, Yorkshire, UK 1943), grew up in Yorkshire and attending art schools in Scarborough, Bradford and Leeds before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, after serving in WW1, until 1922, and later in Paris. He taught at the Bethnal Green Men's Institute in 1925, and at the Bow and Bromley Evening Institute, 1926-7. Cooper was a friend of Walter Richard Sickert and a member of the East London Art Club, later the East London Group, between 1928-34. He particpated in their exhibitions, from the first at Whitechapel Gallery in 1928, to the one held at the National Gallery, Millbank (Tate), organised by their friends Sir Joseph Duveen (1869-1939) and Charles Aitken, its Directorf and Contemporary Art Society committee member, in 1929, and those held at Alex. Reid & Lefevre galleries. He also became a member of The London Group in 1930. He was briefly married to fellow member Phyllis Bray (1911-1991), as his second wife, between 1931 and 1936. The President of the Contemporary Art Society, Lord Howard de Walden (1880-1946), acquired The Orchestra in 1931 which was later presented to York Art Gallery in 1938.
