Background
Washington Bogart Cooper was born near Jonesborough, Tennessee, on September 18, 1802, one of nine children.
Washington Bogart Cooper was born near Jonesborough, Tennessee, on September 18, 1802, one of nine children.
He studied art with Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl in Murfreesboro and settled in Nashville in 1830.
A brother, William Brown Cooper (1811–1890), also became a painter. As a child, he lived near Carthage, Tennessee and Shelbyville, Tennessee. In 1831, he went to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to study art with Thomas Sully and Henry Inman, and returned to Nashville in 1832.
From 1837 to 1848, Cooper averaged thirty-five portraits a year.
His portraits of Tennessee governors, commissioned by the Tennessee Historical Society, can be seen in the Tennessee State Capitol and the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville. The Tennessee State Museum holds fifty of his portraits.
His account book can be found on microfilm in the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Washington Cooper died of pneumonia on March 30, 1888, at the age of eighty-six, and he is buried in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville.