Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cooper, Robert (fl.1800-1836)
COOPER, ROBERT (fl. 1800–1836), engraver, was largely employed during the first quarter of the century in engraving portraits. Among the publications on which he was engaged were: ‘La Belle Assemblée,’ a fashionable periodical; ‘Old Mortality’ and other novels by Sir Walter Scott; Lodge's ‘Portraits of Illustrious Personages;’ Chamberlaine's ‘Imitations of Original Drawings, by Hans Holbein;’ Tresham and Ottley's ‘British Gallery of Pictures,’ &c. He was employed by the Duke of Buckingham to execute some private plates for him; the most important and the best known of these is the engraving Cooper executed of the ‘Chandos’ portrait of Shakespeare. For him also he engraved portraits of the Duke of Buckingham, after Saunders, and Earl Temple, after the same; Count Gondomar, after Velazquez; Marquis de Vieuville, after Vandyck, and others. Cooper was also a very prolific engraver of book plates and vignettes, &c., and exhibited with the Associated Engravers in 1821. He was in addition a publisher, and in this line of business he seems to have met with financial disaster, as on 31 Oct. 1826 and the two following days his collection and stock of prints, drawings, and copperplates were dispersed by auction at Southgate's Rooms in Fleet Street. Among the drawings were some by Samuel de Wilde [q. v.], after whom Cooper executed numerous engravings of leading actors and actresses of the day for various theatrical publications. He is stated to have been living in 1836. He left unfinished in 1826 a large engraving of ‘Christ bearing the Cross,’ after Mignard.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Leblanc's Manuel de l'Amateur d'Estampes; Bromley's Cat. of British Engraved Portraits; Collection of Sale Catalogues in the Print Room, British Museum.]