Cowper, Frank Cadogan
(British, 1877-1958)
Frank Cadogan Cowper, the last of the Pre-Raphaelites, was born in 1877, at Wicken in Northamptonshire, the son of an author. He entered St John's Wood Art School in 1896 and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in 1897. He was greatly influenced during this time by exhibitions of the work of Ford Madox Brown (1896), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1898) and John Everett Millais (1898). Cowper's work was first accepted at the Academy in 1899, and his first notable success was An Aristocrat Answering the Summons to Execution, Paris, 1793, exhibited in 1901. In 1902, after completing his training, Cowper travelled to Italy before working for six months in the studio of E.A. Abbey, R.A., a painter of historical subjects.

In common with the earlier Pre-Raphaelite painters, minute detail and rich colours predominated in Cowper's work, and his output in early years appears to have been small (he only exhibited one or two pictures each year at the Academy until 1913). Following the example of the Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt, Cowper took immense trouble researching his subjects, travelling to Assisi before painting St Francis of Assisi and the Heavenly Melody, and having a grave dug for his depiction of Hamlet - the churchyard scene, exhibited in 1902.
Cowper usually chose historical, literary or religious subjects for his pictures in which it was thought that 'he showed a good deal of invention'. In 1905 St Agnes in Prison receiving from Heaven the 'Shining White Garment' was bought for the Chantrey Bequest (Tate Gallery, London).
Cowper was elected A.R.A in 1907; and was made a R.A. in 1934. In 1910, Cowper was commissioned to paint a mural for the House of Commons depicting a Tudor scene, and in 1912 completed further decorative panels there. In the 1920s he began painting numerous portraits of women, with softer effects and a 'cloying sweetness'. His major patron was Evelyn Waugh.

During the Second World War Cowper moved to Jersey, but later returned to England, and settled in Gloucestershire in 1944. He continued to exhibit until 1957. He died in Cirencester the following year, aged eighty-one.