Rosalys Coope | |
---|---|
Born | Rosalys T Torr 1921 Steyning |
Died | 2018 |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Architectural Historian |
Spouse | Peter Coope |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | The Courtauld Institute of Art |
Thesis | Salomon de Brosse and the Development of the French Style of architecture 1565-1630 |
Doctoral advisor | Anthony Blunt |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Architectural History |
Rosalys Coope (1921-2018) was a much respected architectural historian. As well as an academic and researcher she served in the Women's Royal Naval Service during World War II.
Rosalys T Torr was born in 1921;the birth registered in Steyning,Sussex. [1] Her mother died when Rosalys was ten months old.
Torr's education in the 1930s took place in Switzerland and Italy. In 1938,as war threatened and with Mussolini in power in Italy,she resided in Florence at a house sheltering Jewish people trying to flee the country. At the height of the Munich Crisis in that same year Torr was in Paris eventually making her way home to comparative safety. [2] Torr joined the Women's Royal Naval Service. She served in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1944 and attained the rank of Acting 3rd Officer. [3]
After the war ended Torr became an undergraduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art,London,under the tutelage of Margaret Whinney. It was in London that she met and married Peter Coope (1919-2005) in 1951 in Chelsea. [4] The couple moved to Epperstone in Nottinghamshire in the same year. They had two daughters,Clare and Helena.
After the war and before her marriage Torr worked as assistant to Sir Kenneth Clark for two years. Sir Kenneth had been appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford in 1946 for a term of three years. He was also a member of various important committees during this period. [5]
Her marriage to Peter Coope,a Chartered Accountant,was followed by the move to Epperstone,where her husband joined his father's accountancy practice. [6] Following the birth of their two children,Coope took up her research interests joining the Bromley House Library and becoming a member of the Council of the Thoroton Society in 1955 and its President from 2008-2014. [7]
Over the ensuing years Coope remained an active researcher and author in her field with a number of publications to her name. Her works included articles for the journal 'Architectural History'.
Her interest in and enthusiasm for research culminated in her registering for a PhD,at the Courtauld Institute of Art,which was subsequently awarded in 1972. Her tutor was Anthony Blunt and their interests coincided not least with Coope's fluency in French. The subject of her dissertation was the French architect Salomon de Brosse (1565-1630). [8]
As well as her published works,Coope became part of the fabric of intellectual life in Nottingham as her various obituaries attest. [9]
Photographs attributed to Coope are held in the Conway Library [10] collection of images at the Courtauld Institute of Art. This physical collection of glass and film negatives as well as photographic prints is in the process of being digitised as part of a wider project 'Courtauld Connects'. [11]
In 1961 Coope was elected as Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA). An obituary notes that Coope was part of a group of young women scholars elected to the Society and that her life exemplified scholarly achievement in art and architectural history. [12]
Kirkby-in-Ashfield is a market town in the Ashfield District of Nottinghamshire,England. With a population of 25,265,it is a part of the wider Mansfield Urban Area. The Head Offices of Ashfield District Council are located on Urban Road in the town centre.
Dr Robert Thoroton was an English antiquary,mainly remembered for his county history,The Antiquities of Nottinghamshire (1677).
William Frederick Webb (1829–1899) was a High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and officer in the British Army.
Flintham is a village and civil parish in the Rushcliffe district in Nottinghamshire,7 miles from Newark-on-Trent and opposite RAF Syerston on the A46. It had a population of 597 at the 2011 Census and estimated at 586 in 2019. The village name was taken by the Ham class minesweeper HMS Flintham.
Bromley House Library is a subscription library in Nottingham.
Alixe Bovey FSA is a Canadian medieval art historian and Dean and Deputy Director at the Courtauld Institute of Art,a college of the University of London. Her research has been chiefly concerned with pictorial narratives and their cultural and literary context. She has also written on medieval monsters.
Harry Gill LRIBA was an architect based in Nottingham.
Peter John Murray was a British art historian and the Professor of History of Art at Birkbeck College,London from 1967 to 1980. Together with his wife,Linda Murray,he wrote primers on Italian Renaissance art which have been used by generations of students. In 1959 they published the highly successful Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists,which was frequently updated and reissued. In 1963,they published two substantial introductory texts The Art of the Renaissance, and a book that became a classic primer The Architecture of the Renaissance.
Bridget Cherry OBE,FSA,Hon. FRIBA is a British architectural historian who was series editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides from 1971 until 2002,and is the author or co-author of several volumes in the series.
Lindy M. Grant,,is professor emerita of medieval history at the University of Reading,an honorary research fellow of the Courtauld Institute of Art,and a former president of the British Archaeological Association. Grant is a specialist in Capetian France and its neighbours in the 11th to 13th centuries.
Maurice Willmore Barley M.A.,F.S.A.,F.R.Hist.S.,was an English historian and archaeologist,specialising in medieval settlements and historic buildings.
Anthony Applemore Mornington Bryer FSA FRHistS was a British historian of the Byzantine Empire and founder of the Centre for Byzantine,Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham.
John Vincent Beckett is an English local historian who has been Professor of English Regional History at the University of Nottingham since 1990.
Thomas Close was an English antiquarian and archaeologist.
Myles Thoroton Hildyard (1914–2005) was an English landowner,diarist and historian. He won the Military Cross for his escape from a prisoner-of-war camp after the Battle of Crete.
Amanda Simpson FSA,is a British medievalist,author,editor,librarian and art historian. Photographs attributed to her appear in the collection of the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art,where she worked as Conway Librarian in the 1970s while completing her studies. She completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute in 1978 on the subject of 14th-century English and Bohemian painting. She became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 5 May 1990.
Peter Kidson was a British Emeritus Professor and Honorary Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art where he lectured on Medieval Architecture until 1990. In his obituary in The Telegraph,he was described as “the most influential historian of medieval architecture of his generation in the English-speaking world”.
Nicola Coldstream,FSA,is a British architectural historian and academic with special interests in the 13th and 14th centuries. Coldstream studied History and Fine Arts at Cambridge University and obtained her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Alexander David McLees. was a British architectural historian. From 1998 to 2001,he was a director in the Executive Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB).
Peter Draper,is an architectural historian who has,over his long academic career,specialised in medieval architecture with a particular interest in English ecclesiastical building,primarily cathedrals,and the relationship between the architecture and its social,political and liturgical functions. Latterly his research has extended to Islamic architecture and its influence on Western traditions. He is Professor emeritus and an honorary life member of Birkbeck College,University of London where he is currently Visiting Professor in the History of Architecture. He has published numerous articles and books including The Formation of English Gothic :Architecture and Identity,for which he won two prestigious awards;the Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians in 2008 and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion in 2009,awarded by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.