Little is known about Frederick Charles Cooper prior to the 1840s. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844 with a work titled Ophelia. He became recognized after he joined Austen Henry Layard (archeologist, politician and diplomat) on a significant expedition in 1849 as the official artist. Layard writes in his 1853 text Discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon ‘the assistance of a competent artist was most desirable, to portray with fidelity those monuments which injury and decay had rendered unfit for removal. Mr. F. Cooper was selected by the Trustees of the British Museum to accompany the expedition in this capacity’.

The expedition resulted in the excavation of Nineveh, the ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia. Layard had first seen the mounds of Nineveh when he and his travelling companion Edward Mitford passed through Mosul in early 1840. He explored the ruins in 1847 however two years later, on the eastern shores of the river Tigris opposite Mosul, the lost palace of Sennacherib was discovered. Cooper produced important watercolour works and drawings of the excavation and local topography in Northern Iraq and north-east Syria.