on the staff of the RAF. Chlorine gas permanently damaged the sight of his right eye, so that he almost lost his sight, although he could still draw and differentiate colour. After his eye injury he became a war artist, "recording airships and views from them". Cooper became an official artist to the RAF by 1917, riding in various aircraft and taking aerial photographs. "He became an expert in the art and technique of large scale aerial camouflage, sketching and painting landscapes from a variety of aircraft". During the Second World War, Cooper was producing newspaper illustrations of theatres of war, taking his information from photographs. In 1964 he had a cornea grafting operation to his right eye in Westminster Hospital. Career Training Cooper "painted on china at Worcester for four years before receiving any art training". He attended art school in the West Midlands and at Bilston School of Art, where "he won a Staffordshire Scholarship and five King's Prizes in one year". By the time he was seventeen, Cooper was describing himself as an artist/painter working from home, He trained at the Royal School of Art, from which he graduated in 1911. Having attained a Staffordshire county scholarship, in 1911 he became a student at the Royal College of Art (RCA) where he gained his diploma, and then taught there. By 1908 he had moved to Jubilee Place in Chelsea. So in 1911 the Census finds him as an art student aged 26, lodging in the West Kensington home of his uncle Thomas Millard, a jeweller's assistant. During his student years, Cooper was working for around twelve months in the studio of John Singer Sargent, filling in details and also backgrounds in Sargent's works. After leaving the RCA, "he was for a time employed by a decorative firm, and painted altar pieces and tapestries and restored old masters. Occupation Cooper said that John Singer Sargent, under whom he trained for a while, was his "greatest influence". Sargent was an Impressionist, and in 2012 Christie's categorised Cooper's work as impressionist. Cooper painted in gouache, oil on canvas and watercolour. He painted "a wide range of subjects from portraits to scenes on salmon rivers and views from airships". He also painted some "fine landscapes"; some of them were of the south coast of England, and he was "well known for his mural decorations". He was a teacher at the Hammersmith