William Heaton Cooper (1903 - 1995)

I find the medium of words a very difficult one by which to express
infinite feelings, so I try to do it in paint – W Heaton Cooper.

William Heaton Cooper’s first memory was of dipping one of his father’s brushes into the beck that ran down from the Old Man and past their home in Coniston. He spread its bristles over a rounded green boulder veined with lines of white quartz. He was three.

Partly in an attempt to get noticed by his father, Heaton – as William became known – continued to follow the great man’s example by drawing everything in sight. On the big day, when he was thirteen, that his father presented him with some paints, his enduring memory was of trying to paint the waterfall Skelwith Force and, he claimed, of not doing very well.

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