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- John Copley
- Also known as
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John Copley
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primary name: Copley, John
- Details
- individual; printmaker; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1875-1950
- Biography
- Painter, etcher and lithographer; born in Manchester and studied at the university there and at the Manchester School of Art. He then studied in the studio of Watson Niuchol and Arthur Cope before moving to the Royal Academy Schools. He spent several years in Italy and returning to London, with Joseph Penell, was a founder member of the Senefelder Club, set up for the revival of lithography, which Copley had taken up in 1906. He was the honorary secretary of the club, 1910-16. He exhibited extensively at the Cooling Galleries, Goupil Gallery, with the Royal Society of British Artists, New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and won awards at the Chicago Art Instituite in 1930. He married the artist Edith Gabain (q.v.) in 1913. They lived in Kent and later moved to Hampstead, where they shared a studio. For health reasons he spent over two years in Alassio, Italy, where he concentrated on etching, but returned to England where he died in 1950. He was president of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1947 and an honorary member of the Pulchri Studion in the Hague. His work is is held in the V & A Museum, the Yale Centre for British Art as well as the British Museum. Gorton and Cooke held an exhibition of his work, together with that of his wife, in 1990.
- Bibliography
- Harold J. L. Wright, 'The Lithographs of John Copley & Ethel Gabain', Chicago, 1924.
Copley compiled his own manuscript list of his work, and this numbering forms the basis for:
Gordon Cooke, 'John Copley: Etchings', Fine Art Society, London 1998
idem, 'John Copley Lithographs', London 2000