Colin Campbell Cooper (1856-1937)
Colin Campbell Cooper was much praised at the beginning of the twentieth century as one of America’s greatest painters of the city and particularly of the skyscrapers that were just beginning to define the modern American cityscape.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 8, 1856, Cooper studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Académie Julian in Paris. He returned to his native city to teach watercolor at the Drexel Institute from 1895 until 1898. In 1897 Cooper married the artist Emma Lampert (1860-1920), and together they traveled and painted in France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, India, and Ceylon. Around 1902 he opened a studio in New York City where he pursued his signature theme.
Cooper visited California for the first time in 1915 when he went to see his paintings installed in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. He was charmed by the West and exhibited a watercolor with the alluring title The Magic City, San Diego at the annual exhibition of the American Water Color Society in 1918.
After the death of his wife, Cooper settled in Santa Barbara and became Dean of Painting of the newly founded Santa Barbara Community School of Arts. He taught outdoor painting; his colleagues included the well-known artists Albert Herter, who taught life classes, landscape instructor Carl O. Borg, and illustration instructor Fernand Lungren. Cooper made Santa Barbara his home for the remainder of his life and died there on November 6, 1937.
Cooper’s work is represented in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; the Cincinnati Art Museum; the St. Louis Art Museum; and the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.
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