Alfred Ernest Egerton Cooper (5 July 1883 – 11 May 1974), RBA, ARCA, was a British painter of portraits, landscapes and other figurative work.

Cooper's maternal grandparents were Robert Speed (Foston c.1811 – Lincoln 1863),[nb 1][1] a stocktaker (employee who takes inventory) at the ironworks, and his wife Sarah Hannah "Annie" or "Ann" née Jones (Heighington 17 January 1810 – Elkesley 2 October 1911),[nb 2][1][2] whose portrait was painted by her grandson in 1901 when she was 95 years old.

His father was Alfred John Cooper (born 12 February 1857),[nb 4] a railway clerk; later a political agent and relieving officer from Coven, Staffordshire.

[5] His mother was school mistress Sarah Hannah Sturges Speed (26 July 1859 – 1896/1897),[nb 5][5] and his parents married at Trinity Chapel, Wolverhampton, on 19 June 1882.

[11] On Twelfth Night 1947 at Monte Carlo's Sporting Club, a party was held for a number of celebrities; Cooper and his wife Irene were photographed there.

[16] Cooper died at home at 4 Oakley Gardens, Chelsea, London,[6][8][16] on 11 May 1974,[nb 11][7][10] and was cremated on 16 May 1974 at Putney Vale Cemetery.

[17][18] Cooper was described in The Times as "a generous man of great charm, a wonderful raconteur and well known to a wide circle of people in the art world".

[10] According to his son, Peter, Cooper "generally looked more like a retired British colonel than an artist, and always dressed to the nines, even in his studio".

[16] During the First World War, Cooper served in the Artists Rifles (28th County of London Battalion), and then was commissioned as a captain on the staff of the RAF.

[8] "He became an expert in the art and technique of large scale aerial camouflage, sketching and painting landscapes from a variety of aircraft".

[20] Having attained a Staffordshire county scholarship, in 1911 he became a student at the Royal College of Art (RCA) where he gained his diploma, and then taught there.

[8] So in 1911 the Census finds him as an art student aged 26, lodging in the West Kensington home of his uncle Thomas Millard, a jeweller's assistant.

[20] After leaving the RCA, "he was for a time employed by a decorative firm, and painted altar pieces and tapestries and restored old masters.

[31] Due to Cooper's preference for figurative art, he was finding it difficult to sell paintings by 1970, so he threw open his studio to the public between 24 February and 7 March 1970.

[nb 13][12]In 1922, Cooper and artists Thomas Eyre Macklin and Alfred Praga (1867–1949) were chosen by the Daily Mirror to judge its youth beauty competition.

[12] Two artists' models were photographed demonstrating their costumes for the Chelsea Arts Club Ball at the Albert Hall on New Year's Eve 1930, in Cooper's studio.

[34] In 1961, Cooper, as president of Chelsea Art Society, formally welcomed Pietro Annigoni to the studio above his own, in Glebe Place.

[35] In 1972, John Dunn of BBC Radio 2 recorded a one-and-a-half-hour interview at the Glebe Place studio, in which Cooper talked about "artists and his own life".

[8] In 1933, Cooper's portrait of Blue Eyes, featuring a blonde woman with 1920s bob and flapper necklace, was reproduced in The Sphere newspaper.

[36] In 1940, Cooper executed portraits of King George VI in his naval uniform and as Colonel of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps,[8][25][10] besides "countless earls".

It became his "best known portrait", and later gained the title Profile for Victory after being "reproduced during the war in large numbers",[10][25] and being hung in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of that year.

[40] The painting showed "Mr Churchill sitting in evening dress with decorations and holding a cigar before the model of a sailing ship".

[11] In 1935, Cooper painted the scene inside Westminster Hall, at the Silver Jubilee of George V; it was "specially drawn for The Sphere" newspaper, and was printed as a double-page spread.

[44] In the same month he executed two pictures for the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News (ISDN) titled The Morning of Derby Day showing "gypsies resting on the grass after putting the finishing touches to their booths", and An Alfresco Breakfast showing "gypsies taking their morning meal in the open on the day of the great race".

[51] In 1933, he exhibited two oil paintings: Miss Jessica Tandy as Manuela in "Children in Uniform", which "won immediate success", and A Dorset Beach.

[59] Cooper's 1950 contribution was The Dancer, a head-and-shoulders profile portrait in oils of the sitter in a balletic pose but wearing a jumper.

[22] In 1973, when Cooper was nearly 90 years old, some of his First World War paintings of aircraft and views from them, including his Over the Lines, were exhibited at the Parkin Gallery in Belgravia, London.