| Information for individual 3323 |
|  |
| 'Frank CADOGAN-COWPER (M) | Parents/Siblings
| | | | | | Others called Cadogan-Cowper |
Go to home page |
| | | Date | Place | | BirthRecord
|
6/10/1877 |
Wicken, Hants |
| | | DeathRecord
|
19/11/1958 |
Cirencester |
| | | Life&Work;
|
| | | Will/Admon
|
| |
| Celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painter
OBITUARY. The Times Thursday 20th November 1958 (Courtesey of Geoff Cadogan-Cowper)
Mr Frank Cadogan Cowper has died at the age of 81.
Cowper was born at Wicken Rectory, Northamptonshire on the 16th October 1877. His father was Frank Cowper, author of several works on cruising and romantic tales, who married Edith daughter of the Reverend E Cadogen Rector of Wicken. From Cranleigh School Cowper proceeded to St John’s Wood Art School, and later to the Royal Academy Schools, where he won several prizes and medals. For 6 months he worked in the studio of Sir Edwin Abbey RA, the decorative painter and illustrator. His first picture was hung at the RA when he was 22, and thereafter he was a regular contributor there, and at the Royal Watercolour Society, as also at the Paris Salon, and in Rome and Venice. He was made ARA in 1907 and RA in 1934. He is represented at the Tate Gallery, at the National Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, and in most provincial galleries in England.
The most remarkable thing about Cowper was the complete change in his style between his earlier and later work.. Without any comparison in rank between the 2 artists, the change was as complete and as apparently inexplicable as it was between the early and late Corot.
Cowper begins as a painter of romantic subject pictures in the Pre-Raphaelite manner; he ended as a painter of pretty women in what may be called the chocolate box manner.
Of Cowper’s thoroughness in his early Pre-Raphaelite exercises many stories are told. For his early picture of the graveyard scene in Hamlet, he had a grave specially dug, which he said ‘astounded the neighbours very much,’ and when he decided on a picture of St Francis of Assisi he went o Assisi for the purpose. A real Bishop, the late Dr Collins, Bishop of Gibralter was his model. This again was the evolution of his ‘Devil Disgiused as a Troubedor,’ exhibited at the RA in 1907, and described at the time as ‘a picture of the year. Sold in London for £1522 it began 10 years earlier as a sketch club illustration to the subject of ‘The Minstrel,’ at the St John’s Wood Art School, representing a Mestiphelean youth playing the lute to the disturbance of half hall of medieval people. The club show was criticsed by the late Mr Onslow Ford RA, who praised Cowper’s sketch so highly that the young artist decided to make a picture of it. Five years later he saw the 15th century stained glass in the church at Fairford Gloucestershire, and took them as the background. Next he turned the medieval people into monks and finally nuns; some weeping, some praying, some enraptured, and some horrified. This description will give some idea of the kind of labour that Cowper put into his romantic compositions , and it cannot be denied that they showed a good deal of invention, though of a literary rather than a strictly pictorial kind, as well as decorative ability, particularly in colour. Examples that come to mind are ‘St Agnes in Heaven,’ and ‘Lucretia Borgia,’ Chantry Bequest purchases of 1905 and 1914 respectively, and both in the Tate Gallery. Their explicit titles show how very well they were intended to be looked at. For the Houses of Parliament he executed a mural painting ‘Erasmus and Thomas Moore visit the children of Henry V11, and decorative panels, and for the church in Godalming an altar piece. His Diploma Work ‘Vanity,’ was exhibited at the RA in 1937.
Two later works which caused some comment were ‘The Featherbed Farmer,’ said to have been inspired by remarks made by Mr Stanley Evans, formerly Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Food, and ‘The Jealous Husband,’ showing a man disguised as a priest listening to his wife’s confession.
Of the portraits by which he was generally represented at the RA in later years, it is difficult to speak with enthusiasm, but it can be said that the failed less from lack of ability than from the confusion of aim; a mixture of the decorative and realistic that spoiled both. It is certain that his qualities showed better in watercolour-he was a member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours-whch medium encourages the approximation to the miniature style.
There was little of the traditional artist in Cowper’s appearance, and he is said to have worn higher collars than any other man in the country.
Frank Cowper - from the Royal Academy of Arts
GB/0397 Royal Academy of Arts Archive.
>COW Frank Cadogan Cowper, letters to his mother [Edith Cowper] 1899-1908
Reference Code COW Level Fonds Title Frank Cadogan Cowper, letters to his mother [Edith Cowper] Date 1899-1908 Extent & Medium 2 bundles (of 34 items) Historical Background Frank Cadogan Cowper RA, sometimes known as "the last of the Pre-Raphaelites".
Born in 1877 in Northamptonshire he entered the St. John's Wood Art School in 1896, enrolling at the Royal Academy Schools the following year. At the time of the earliest of the present letters Cowper was still a student at the Academy schools and was shortly to begin assisting in the studio of Edwin Austin Abbey, R.A.
In terms of style Cowper looked resolutely backwards. He appears to have regarded his painting technique as the final synthesis of British nineteenth century developments. Although he regarded the Pre-Raphaelite movement as a touch-stone Cowper's immediate influence was the "historical" tradition as interpreted by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Edward Poynter and E.A. Abbey. After benefitting from remarkable early success Cowper was overtaken by the many convulsions in the Art of the 20th century. He later turned to portraiture, with a fair measure of success.
Not much is known of Edith Cowper outside of evidence provided in COW/3. It appears that she divorced Frank's father, also Frank, in the 1890s citing violent behaviour and infidelity. There are many references in Cowper's letters to her writing for the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and it is likely that writing was her major source of income. Criticism of Cowper's attitude towards women, implied by Cowper's responses to her in several letters, suggest an independent, highly moral personality allied to a modern sense of sexual politics. Provenance The material has descended through members of the immediate family of Edith Cowper. Acquisition Donated 2005 by Revd. Antonia Cretney. Content Description As the letters are written by Cowper to his mother they display a remarkable openness in both subject and expression. Cowper makes interesting observations as a student of the Royal Academy of this period and provides an insight into the studio practice of E.A. Abbey, R.A.
Later letters contain trenchant opinions on the proper relation of the sexes and enough evidence to suggest friction between mother and son. Although the archive includes no letters by Edith Cowper her son does frequently reflect on her words, allowing for some idea of the conversation in the round.
Cowper is revealing in the details he provides of his early professional success. He provides accounts of all his early exhibited works and their reception. He also writes on his election to the Old Watercolour Society and to Associate grade at the Royal Academy. In the later letters he discusses arrangements prior to his commission to paint in the House of Lords. Arrangement The letters arrived within their original envelopes, in two seperate bundles, tied with elastic bands. It was suggested by the donor that the bundles had always been seperate, and so they remain, now as two seperate series. Arrangement within this division is by strict chronological sequence. |
|
|
