How you can use this image
This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).
Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.
The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.
Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.
Notes
Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.
Wally Cooper still has in his possession two letters from a firm of steelworks’ consulting and contracting engineers in Kingsway, London. The first, dated March 1937, confirms that he would commence work in their drawing office on the 30th March at a salary of 25 shillings per week. The second, dated May 1979, informs him that the company will cease operations on the 30th September that year, and that therefore his employment would be terminated. Born in Wimbledon in 1920, he spent most of the 42 years between the dates those letters were written commuting between Surrey and the office in Kingsway, working mainly on the design, construction and commissioning of furnaces for steelworks’ rolling mills. Frequent visits to steelworks throughout the UK and occasionally to Europe and India, were also part of the job.
Cooper says: 'It was satisfying work because we saw jobs through from enquiry to commissioning when the steel billets or slabs left the furnace at 1,200°C on the way to be rolled into reinforcing rods, joists and so on for building. When I and my friends from Junior Technical School were studying engineering at evening classes just before and after the war, we were sure that as draughtsmen we had a job for life, as nothing could be made before it was put down in detail on paper. I went "high-tech" when I swapped my slide ruler for a pocket calculator in 1970. Now I suppose it is all done on a computer!'
Following redundancy, he moved to Worcestershire for three years and then on to a village in Wiltshire, at the same time becoming self-employed, doing mainly carpentry, picture framing, and selling his own paintings through group exhibitions and commissions.
Girton College, University of Cambridge
Cambridge
Title
Wally Cooper, Retired Draughtsman
Date
1991
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 150 x W 88 cm
Accession number
464
Acquisition method
on loan from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Work type
Painting
Inscription description
signature and date
Girton College, University of Cambridge
Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB3 0JG England
-
Sir Christopher Hum, Master (2006–2012) Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge -
Royal West of England Academy Officers, 2000–2004, with the President and his Newfoundland Dog 'Bess' Royal West of England Academy -
Limited Palette Royal West of England Academy -
Sir Kenneth G. Newton (1918–2008), Bt, OBE, TD, PSGW, President of the Board of General Purposes (1986–1991) Museum of Freemasonry -
Professor Quentin R. D. Skinner Christ's College, University of Cambridge -
David James George Hennessy, Lord Windlesham, Principal (1989–2002) Brasenose College, University of Oxford -
Marilyn Speers Butler (b.1937) Exeter College, University of Oxford - 11 more