Margaret Miller Cooper

Margaret Miller Cooper, a talented, well trained, wealthy, and ambitious artist, was born in 1874 in Terryville, Connecticut. She attended Smith College and taught art in the Stamford school system when she was young. She studied art at the National Academy of Design, Pratt, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She also studied privately with Henry Snell (1858-1943), Guy Wiggins (1883-1962), Dwight Tryon (1849-1925), Charles Woodbury (1864-1940), and Robert Brackman (1898-1980). Her husband, Elisha Cooper (1869-1947) was, a prominent New Britain businessman who helped found the Fafnir Bearing Company. She often painted the local scenes when accompanying him on business trips or while traveling in Nova Scotia, Palm Beach, Nassau, and the White Mountains in New Hampshire. When at home, she would be driven by her chauffeur to the selected painting site and served lunch.

She was a founding member of the Hartford Town and County Club in 1925, often showing in their group shows starting in 1927, with a solo show in November 1940. She showed frequently with the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts and endowed a prize for its annual exhibitions. She exhibited regularly with the New Haven Paint and Clay Club and the Lyme Art Association. She also exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Academy of Design, the National Association of Women Painters, and the Palm Beach League of Artists,

She exhibited two pieces in the first Society of Hartford Women Painters show in 1929 titled, “Eight-Mile River” and “”Black Walnut”. The Courant review said: “’Black Walnut’ by Margaret Cooper is one of the best of the landscapes shown”. She continued exhibiting with the society in almost every show from 1929 until the 1950’s.

She and her husband were major supporters of the New Britain Museum of American Art where she received a posthumous retrospective exhibition in 1966. She was also included in the NBMAA 2001 show titled “Women Artists of New Britain”.

She died in New Britain on May 18, 1965.

“She painted for the love of painting, uninterrupted from the age of nine until her death in 1965. Spanning seventy years of consistent and conscientious effort, her painting remains a memorial to her unswerving standards,”

(New Britain Museum of American Art quoted in a pamphlet for a 1985 show at the Lyme Academy.)

Her works are in the collections of the NBMAA, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Town and County Club, the Florence Griswold, the Lyme Art Association, Smith College, the Lyman Allyn, Packer Institute, and numerous private collections.

Sources:

Ancestry.com: ancestors, census information, residences, foreign travel, descendants

Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition Catalogues 1910-1925, Auerbach Library, Wadsworth

Atheneum

Family memorabilia Hartford Courant Archives

McNally, Owen, NBMAA 2001 Exhibit Showcases a Century of Works by 39 Women Artists, Hartford

Courant, June 24, 2001

Secretary’s Records of the Women Painters and Sculptors of Hartford (1929-1934), Connecticut

Historical Society

Town and County Club Bulletins and membership records: Town and County Cub Archives

Treasurer’s Reports of the Women Painters and Sculptors of Hartford (1929-1934), Connecticut

Historical Society

Wellman, Lindsley, Women Artists of New Britain, NBAA Exhibition, 2001, Margaret Miller Cooper

Women Painters and Sculptors of Hartford, Exhibition Catalogues 1929-1933, Connecticut Historical

Society

© Gary W. Knoble, 2016