Julian Cooper was born in Grasmere, Cumbria in 1947, the youngest of the Heaton Cooper dynasty of landscape painters. He studied at Lancaster School of Art (1963-64) and Goldsmiths College School of Art (1964-69). Awarded the Boise Travelling Scholarship in 1969, he travelled in Europe and was resident at the British School at Rome (1969-70). He returned to the Lake District in 1975 and his work has ranged from narrative paintings based on Malcom Lowry's novel Under the Volcano to a series of paintings about the assassination of the Brazilian union leader and environmentalist Chico Mendes. He has since developed an international reputation as one of the most imaginative and thought-provoking mountain painters of his generation. He now lives and works in Cockermouth.
