Surveyor and landscape artist. Born Doncaster 1833 to a Quaker family, parents William Cooper (1793-1871) and Jane Thornhill (d 1891). Brother of Thornhill Cooper. Licensed as a surveyor in New Zealand under the Native Land Act of 1862 and first recorded in New Zealand in 1864, working in Canterbury. In 1864-1865 he was surveying the Waikato confiscated lands for settlement. He may have been working in Greymouth as a surveyor by 1865. He was certainly there by 1 Jan 1866, listed as working there in the 'Return of Officers employed in Westland' at 1 Jul 1867, as having been working in Westland for 18 months. He transferred to the Westland County Council in 1867 and he appears to have been still based there by the early 1870s, judging by dated watercolours of the area. He lived in Ross for some years. He also visited Martin's Bay in south Westland, and watercolours of coal seams near Greymouth, dated 1873, are in Te Papa. Lithographs after his drawings of West Coast gold-mining townships in 1865 were published in 1869 by Harnett & Co of Hokitika. He moved to Australia in 1876 and returned to England in the early 1890s.
