Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/436

 his first wife, two daughters, and by his second wife, two sons and five daughters.

 COPPINGER, RICHARD WILLIAM (1847–1910), naval surgeon and naturalist, born on 11 Oct. 1847 in Dublin, was youngest of the six sons of Joseph William Coppinger, a solicitor of Farmley, Dundrum, co. Dublin, by his wife Agnes Mary, only daughter of William Lalor Cooke, landed proprietor of Fortwilliam, co. Tipperary. The father's family was long settled at Ballyvolane and Barryscourt, co. Cork, and was said to descend from the first Danish settlers in Cork city. Coppinger received his medical education in Dublin, graduating M.D. at the Queen's University in 1870. Entering the medical department of the navy, he was appointed surgeon to H.M.S. Alert, which, with H.M.S. Discovery, left Portsmouth on 29 May 1875 under the command of captain, (afterwards Sir) George S. Nares on a voyage of exploration towards the North Pole. The Alert reached a higher latitude than had ever been touched before, and Coppinger distinguished himself as the naturalist in charge of one of the sledging parties. On the return of the Alert to England in October 1876 he was specially promoted staff-surgeon and awarded the Arctic medal. Coppinger again served as naturalist in the Alert on her four years' exploring cruise in Patagonian, Polynesian and Mascarene waters from 1878 to 1882.

In 1889 he was appointed instructor in hygiene at the Haslar naval hospital at Gosport, where he was a most successful teacher, his knowledge of bacteriology being in advance of the time. On 13 March 1901 he was appointed inspector-general of hospitals and fleets, and was for three years in charge at Haslar. On 15 May 1904 he was placed on half-pay, and being disappointed in not being made director-general of the medical department of the navy, he retired in 1906.

He died at his residence, Wallington House, Fareham, on 2 April 1910, and was buried at Fareham cemetery. He married, on 8 Jan. 1884, Matilda Mary, daughter of Thomas Harvey Browne, landed proprietor of Sydney, N.S.W., and had issue three sons and one daughter.

Coppinger was author of 'The Cruise of the Alert, 1878-82' (1883). He also wrote 'Some Experiments on the Conductive Properties of Ice made in Discovery Bay, 1875-6 ' (Proc. Roy. Soc. 1878, xxvi.); and 'Account of the Zoological Collections made in the Years 1878-1881, during the Survey of H.M.S. Alert in the Straits of Magellan and the Coast of Patagonia' (Proc. Zoolog. Soc., 1881). He contributed to the parliamentary paper containing the report of the committee (1877) on 'Scurvy in the Arctic Expedition, 1875-6,' and to the 'Report on the Zoological Collections of H.M.S. Alert made in 1881-2' (British Museum, Nat. Hist., 1884).

 CORBET, MATTHEW RIDLEY (1850–1902), painter, born on 20 May 1850 at South Willingham, Lincolnshire, was son of the Rev. Andrew Corbet by his wife Marianne Ridley. He was educated at Cheltenham College, and coming to London entered the Royal Academy schools. His first exhibits at the Royal Academy were portraits, among them those of Lady Slade (1875), Mrs. Heneage Wynne-Finch (1877), and Lady Clay (1879). Though he continued to paint occasional portraits, such as those of Lord Northbourne (1886), Mrs. Stuart (afterwards Lady) Rendel (1891), the Hon. Walter James (1892), Lady Morpeth (1895), and Lady Cecilia Roberts (1897), he was concerned from 1883 onwards almost entirely with landscape. Between 1875 and 1902 he exhibited thirty-eight works in all at the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an associate in 1902. After 1880 he also sent several of his important works to the Grosvenor Gallery, and later to the New Gallery. His 'Sunrise' gained a bronze medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1889; and his 'Morning Glory' (1894) and 'Val d'Arno Evening' (1901), bought under the terms of the Chantrey bequest, are now in the Tate Gallery.

As a pupil and devoted follower of Giovanni Costa, Corbet was steeped in the beauty of Italian landscape, and though he found the subject of his 'Morning Glory' near the Severn, he was, as a rule, at his best when painting under Italian skies. The title that he chose from Keats for one of his exhibits in 1890 'A land of fragrance, quietness, and trees and flowers' suggests 