A LAKE District gallery's new café has been named after the woman who help found a dynasty of great landscape artists.

Norwegian country girl Mathilde Heaton Cooper played a quietly supportive role in the life of Alfred Heaton Cooper, and gave birth to their son, William.

The father and son became known as the most famous of the English landscape artists of their respective generations. Her grandson, Julian Cooper, is now Britain’s foremost painter of mountain scenes and is about to open his third exhibition of the year.

Now she is to be remembered in a new project at the family art studio in Grasmere.

Mathilde’s is the name of the new café which opens this summer, offering an extra dimension of hospitality to one of the Lakes’ most popular tourist destinations.

“She was the love of his life,” said Becky Heaton Cooper, director of the studio and Mathilde’s great grand-daughter. “It really was a love match. Alfred was the centre of her world, and we think it’s wonderful to have her name here now at the centre of our new expansion project.”

The café, an ongoing project itself, is part of a major re-development at the Grasmere studio which will also offer extended exhibition space, and places for artists to work and study.