Charles West Cope

Charles West Cope RA (28 July 1811, in Leeds – 21 August 1890, in Bournemouth) was an English, Victorian era painter of genre and history scenes, and an etcher.

After returning to England, Cope took lodgings in Newman Street, London, then moved to 1 Russell Place, where his landlord and family became his artist's models.

Here he painted Paolo and Franceses and Osteria di Campagna, which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837 and 1838 respectively, and sold shortly thereafter for a considerable sum.

The club published several books of etchings illustrating various themes by well-known authors such as Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, Sonnets by Shakespeare and Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il ponseroso".

They lived first in rented furnished lodgings in Lisson Grove, London, then moved to a house in Kensington (which Cope himself had commissioned) in 1841.

In 1844 he submitted a further design called 'Meeting of Jacob and Rachel,' and was one of the six painters commissioned in July of that year to prepare preliminary drawings, coloured sketches, and specimens of fresco painting for the decoration of the House of Lords.

He visited Peter von Hess in Munich, who was working on a fresco in the Basilica of St. Boniface In 1850, Cope showed King Lear and Cordelia at the RA, and, in 1851, The Sisters, and Laurence Saunders's Martyrdom.

In 1857 Cope exhibited Affronted and executed a fresco of The Burial of Charles I in the peers' corridor (House of Lords).

In 1858 came The Stepping Stones, and in 1859 a picture of Cordelia receiving the News of her father's Ill-treatment, and the fresco of The Parting of Lord and Lady William Russell in the peers' corridor.

In 1862 he painted (using the "water-glass method") the fresco of The Defence of Basing House, and in 1863–64 that of the Expulsion of Fellows from Oxford for refusing to sign the Covenant.

In 1865 he exhibited a study of Fra Angelico in oil, afterwards executed in mosaic on a larger scale at the South Kensington Museum.

In 1865 and 1866 Cope finished his best frescoes in the House of Lords – Meeting of Train Bands to relieve the Siege of Gloucester and Speaker Lenthall asserting the Privileges of the Commons.

The artist's son from his first marriage, Arthur Stockdale Cope RA (1857–1940), became a well-known and successful portrait painter.