Hubert Coop (1872-1953) was born in Olney, Buckinghamshire, the son of the Revd Thomas Coop. He was educated at Wolverhampton and Birmingham, and after a short period in business, went to study at the Lincoln School of Art where he obtained a First Class Degree in Design. He moved to North Wales to take up painting as a profession, concentrating on painting river estuary and coastal scenes from nature. By 1913 he had moved to Lowestoft, Suffolk, where he continued to paint coastal scenes and windmills around Southwold and up the coast into the Norfolk Broads. He then resided in St Ives, Huntingdonshire, for a short period before taking up residence in Kettering, Northamptonshire. His 1918 entry to the Royal Academy has an address in Newland Street, Kettering. In the late 1920s he moved to Bideford, Devon, where he remained for the rest of his life. The Burton Art Gallery & Museum in Bideford has a selection of his watercolours and oil paintings on permanent display. His paintings can often be seen at the Alfred East Art Gallery in Kettering.

Coop was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in London in 1895, aged 22, and subsequently exhibited 24 works there. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy (20); the Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham (20); and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (39).

The Shepherd Girl
A watercolour measuring 19¼” x 12½”. Signed Hubert Coop and dated 1894.

The Subject
This rural scene is an impressionistic early work by Coop, around the time of his election to the Royal Society of British Artists.