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Charles West Cope the younger was born in Leeds in 1811, the son of painter and watercolourist Charles Cope. His father was a close friend of Benjamin West, for whom the child was named, and Joseph M. W. Turner. The young boy's childhood was steeped in the arts. He made an early friend of the great patron John Sheepshanks, and was introduced by him to George Richmond and Richard Redgrave. Bullied at school for his sensitive nature, the young Cope suffered a broken elbow as a result of a particularly serious beating, which left his arm crooked for the rest of his life.
As a young man, Charles West Cope began his art studies at the school of Henry Sass in Bloomsbury, London, moving on to the Royal Academy School in 1828 where he remained for three years. In 1831, at the age of twenty, he travelled to Paris where he studied and copied the old masters in the Louvre. He was particularly fascinated by the Venetian scenes exhibited there, and shortly thereafter organized a trip to Italy. After visiting Florence, Rome, and Naples, he remained in Venice for two years to pursue his painting. It was during this period that he painted his celebrated canvas entitled “Mother and Child”, which was exhibited at the British Institute in 1836.
In 1840 Cope married Charlotte Benning the daughter of a surgeon with a country practice. The couple moved in a house in Kensington which Cope commissioned in 1841. They had two children, Margaret and Arthur. Arthur Stockdale Cope (1857-1940) followed after his father and became a successful portrait painter.
Charles West Cope exhibited frequently at both the Royal Academy and the British Institute between 1833 and 1882. He became an Associate of the Academy in 1843 and was elected a full Member in 1848. He was appointed Professor of painting at the Academy in 1867, delivering six lectures a year until 1875. Other successes include a prize in the competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, which resulted in commissions to paint several frescoes for the House of Lords, including “Edward III Investing the Black Prince with the Order of the Garter”, “Prince Henry Acknowledging the Authority of Judge Gascoigne”, and “Griselda’s First Trial of Patience”.
Cope married his second wife Eleanor Smart in 1879 and the couple settled at Maidenhead in Berkshire. He retired in 1883 as a professional artist although he continued to paint for his own enjoyment. Cope’s autobiography, Reminiscences, was published in 1889. He died in 1890 and is remembered with a memorial tablet in St. Mary Abbots Church in Kensington, London.
Cope is now best remembered for his small intimate cabinet pictures of contemporary genre, particularly his sympathetic studies of mothers with children. Today his works form part of the collections of museums in London, Leicester, Liverpool, Melbourne, and Preston.