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The founder of the gallery Samuel Joshua Cooper bought the building at auction in 1912 for £3,300 when Barnsley Grammar School moved out. First, he gave it to the National Reserve, an early version of the Territorial Army, for a club. But before he died, in 1913, Cooper made the decision to leave the building in trust, with ambitious plans for it to be extended and turned into an art gallery.
As the second son of the wealthy local industrialist Samuel Cooper, who had made his money in coal, iron and linen, S.J.Cooper did what many young gentlemen in the 19th century did. He made a "Grand Tour" of Europe. On his travels, he collected paintings by the artists Corot, Ruskin and Descamps and Isabey seascapes.
Cooper left all but one of his 275 paintings to his new gallery, where they formed the entire permanent collection and continue to inspire visitors today. His other work, Bre Breann in the Forest of Fontainbleau by Narcisse Virgilio Díaz, went to the National Gallery. The Cooper Gallery was named in honour of Cooper and his wife, Fanny, who had died in 1911. Like her husband, she was renowned for her good works.
The Coopers lived on Mount Vernon Road, between Barnsley and Worsbrough. Cooper's local generosity was legendary. He gave money to St Thomas's Church, Worsbrough Dale, St Luke's Church, Worsbrough Common, and the nurses' home at Beckett hospital in Barnsley. He also paid for the erection of the spectacular Oaks Colliery Monument on Kendray Hill, which commemorates the loss of 361 men and boys in a dreadful mining disaster in 1866.
