Colin Campbell Cooper (March 8, 1856 - November 6, 1937) was an American Impressionist painter.
Colin Campbell Cooper was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1879 he entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied under Thomas Eakins. Ten years later he studied at Academie Julian in Paris, as well as the Academies Decluse and Viti. He traveled throughout western Europe before returning to Philadelphia.
He taught watercolor classes at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry from 1895 to 1898. In 1897 he married Emma Lampert, who was also a renowned artist. They moved to New York City in 1898. He soon began work on paintings depicting skyscrapers and the modern American cityscape.
Cooper had a lifelong love of travel. He and Emma were on the S.S. Carpathia on April 15, 1912 and assisted in the rescue of the survivors of the Titanic. He painted several paintings documenting the rescue while aboard the Carpathia. Throughout his career, he travelled the world, chronicling his journeys in sketches, watercolors, and oils. His destinations included Holland and Belgium (1886), France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Ceylon, Burma, India (1913), as well as parts of the United States including Chicago and the East and West Coasts.
Cooper spent the winters of 1915 and 1916 in California while exhibiting in the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco (where he won the Gold Medal for oil and the Silver Medal for watercolor) and the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego.
In 1920 his wife Emma died of tuberculosis. The next year, he moved to Santa Barbara, California where he became dean of the School of Painting at the Santa Barbara Community School of Arts. He married his second wife, Marie Frehsee, in 1927.
Cooper died in Santa Barbara in 1937.
His paintings may be found in many prominent collections, including Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Crocker Museum (Sacramento, CA), Dallas Museum of Art, University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, Carnegie Art Museum (Oxnard, CA), Westmoreland Museum of American Art (Greensburg, PA), New York Historical Society, and the White House (Washington, DC). |