Artwork Information

Suzanne Cooper was one of many artists who were taken under the wing of Lucy Carrington Wertheim, who was first encouraged by Frances Hodgkins to set up a modern art gallery. This delightful depiction of the Royal Albion hotel shows a common seaside view, with small boats drawn up on the beach opposite, in the protection of the groynes which can be found on many British beaches. The artist's use of simplified blocks of form and colour was popular with members of the St Ives school of painters. Cooper began studying at the Grosvenor School of Art in about 1935, but after she married, and her husband returned from the Second World War, she felt it was her duty to stop painting, and her family only discovered a cache of works by their mother after her death in 1992. Royal Albion shows similarity in handling to the works of Christopher Wood and Eric Ravilious in the combination of architectural forms and an animated atmosphere.