The Firth of Forth with the British Fleet

The painting depicts the view of the British Fleet (or the Grand Fleet) stationed in the Firth of Forth, Scotland, from HMA R.9 Airship. We see the front half of the airship, the twin propellers of its front engines protruding out, its large keel party visible above. The sun is setting behind the Forth Bridge giving a hazy quality to the atmosphere and a number of navy ships are visible both below and above the bridge.  

The R.9 was the first airship on which the inventor and aircraft designer Barnes Wallis worked whilst serving as an assistant at Vickers under Chief Designer H. B. Pratt. It was ordered in 1913 but did not fly until 1916, becoming the first British rigid airship to do so. It was dismantled in 1918 after being flown for a total of 165 hours, mainly for experimental purposes. This work depicts the view from one such experimental flight and may be one of the first executed in the air, or developed from sketches made in the air. It was very likely painted during the same flight as the photograph An aerial view of a portion of the Grand Fleet at anchor in the Firth of Forth, taken from the British Airship R.9 (Imperial War Museum, cat. no. Q 20633), though this image shows the view from above the bridge. The R9 had two gondolas suspended from the keel; the forward one containing the control compartment and two of the engines whilst the rear one contained an emergency control station and the other two engines. Cooper would likely have been in the rear gondola, providing the view we see in his painting of the front of the airship. 

The Firth of Forth was a vital Royal Navy stronghold during the war. The British Fleet was initially based in Scapa Flow, Orkney, at the beginning of the war but battle cruisers, commanded by Sir David Beatty, were soon moved to Rosyth, just inland of the Forth Bridge. Eventually, throughout the course of the war, every significant harbour in the Forth estuary was taken over for naval use and the whole of the British Fleet was based there. However, it took several years to ensure the estuary was safe enough for the entire fleet. U-boats and mines were employed by the Germans, with depth charges and sonar not introduced by the British until 1916 and the 1920s respectively, making movement in and out of the estuary perilous. 

In 1917 a Royal Naval Air Station was established in Donibristle bay and it is possible that this is where the R9 flew from. The dockyards throughout the Firth were too small to accommodate ships that did not require attention such as repair or refit, so the battleships would moor above and below the bridge. In Cooper’s painting we see this practice depicted in several ships moored by buoy on the calm seas below with the Forth Bridge in the distance, with the outlines of more of the fleet visible above the bridge. Above the bridge was safer and therefore where the majority of the ships would moor. 

The painting is prominently displayed on the wall of Barnes Wallis' office in the 1955 film The Dam Busters.

Alfred Egerton Cooper 

Alfred Ernest Egerton Cooper was a British painter of portraits, landscapes and other figurative work, notable for his time as an official artist to the RAF during, and beyond, the First World War. 

From modest origins, he began painting china before receiving any formal art training. He then attended art school in the West Midlands and Bilston School of Art, before continuing his training at the Royal School of Art and then the Royal College of Art. During this time as a student Cooper won a prize judged by John Singer Sargent, who was so impressed by the young artist’s work that he offered him a job as his studio assistant. Cooper spent twelve months in Sargent’s studio filling in details and backgrounds of the artist’s works. 

During the First World War Cooper served in the Artists Rifles (28th County of London Battalion) and was then commissioned as a captain on the staff of the RAF. The Artists Rifles was originally raised in London in 1859 as a volunteer light infantry and during the Second World War was used as an officer training unit. The group was set up by Edward Sterling, an art student, and was comprised of various professional painters, musicians, actors and other creatives, a profile it strived to maintain with Frederic Leighton one of its first commanders. Whilst serving, Cooper lost sight in his right eye following a chlorine gas attack, though he was still able to draw and differentiate colours. After his injury he became an official war artist, specialising in portraits of members of the armed forces and recording airships and the views seen from them. His images highlighted the engineering detail and monumental presence of these airships, both in flight and in their sheds.He undertook numerous perilous missions where he would hang suspended from an airship whilst holding his painting equipment to accurately capture the view from the air. This led to Cooper becoming an expert in the art and technique of large-scale aerial camouflage; which combination of paint, colour and pattern could best disguise each of the different aircraft from the enemy. 

It was whilst serving in the Artists Rifles that Cooper met Sir Barnes Wallis, best known for his invention the ‘bouncing bomb’, with the two becoming lifelong friends. Whilst Wallis specialised in inventing airships, Cooper specialised in painting them. Cooper painted Wallis several times and the latter served as best man at the former’s wedding in 1920. 

During the Second World War, Cooper produced newspaper illustrations of the theatres of war, taking his information from contemporary photographs. 

In 1948 Cooper competed at the London Summer Olympics in the arts competition, depicting salmon rivers and horse racing, though it is not known where he placed.

During his career he painted five portraits of Winston Churchill, including the last that Churchill sat for which was completed three days before the politician suffered his final stroke. Cooper recalled in an interview how the notoriously difficult to please Churchill had insisted on observing every brushstroke via a mirror set up behind the artist. Cooper also produced portraits of King George VI, Queen Elizabeth II, ‘countless earls’, three Lord Mayors of London and the official portraits of various British military personnel.

Cooper was described by The Times as ‘a generous man of great charm’ and, according to his son Peter, also an artist, ‘generally looked more like a retired British colonel than an artist, and always dressed to the nines, even in his studio’. He was unashamedly old-fashioned, preferring figurative art, shunning abstraction and modernism. His studio was based in Glebe Pace, Chelsea from 1920 and he continued to work there until almost the end of his life aged 90.