Edward Leroy Loper Sr. (April 7, 1916 – October 11, 2011)Karen Smyles, producer,

',

WHYY-TV WHYY-TV (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Wilmington, Delaware, United States, serving as the primary PBS member station for the Philadelphia area. It is owned by WHYY, Inc., alongside NPR member WHYY-FM (90.9). WHYY-TV and WH ...

, January 2012. was an

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

artist and teacher from Delaware, best known for his vibrant palette and juxtaposition of colors. He taught painting for almost 70 years.

Early life and education

Loper was born to a poor family on the east side of

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington is the List of municipalities in Delaware, most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish colonization of the Americas, Swedish settlement in North America. It lie ...

, in a racially mixed section known as Frogtown.Maria Hess
"The Secret Life of Color,"
''Delaware Today'', February 2007. At the time of his birth, his mother was 16. Loper was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother. Growing up, he did not receive formal artistic training.
The Art of Edward L. Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters
'', Newark, DE: University Museums of the University of Delaware, 2007, p. 1. He attended Howard High School, where he was an All-State football and basketball player."Remembering Edward L. Loper, Sr.,"
''

Congressional Record The ''Congressional Record'' is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Publishing Office and issued when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record Ind ...

'', volume 157, number 165, November 1, 2011, p. S7001. At the time, this was the only high school in Delaware that African Americans were allowed to attend. After graduating from high school in 1934, he had to forego an athletic scholarship at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania to start working in order to help his family financially.Mary Ann Meyers,
Art, Education, and African-American Culture
', New Brunswick, NJ:

Transaction Publishers Transaction Publishers was a New Jersey–based publishing house that specialized in social science books and journals. It was located on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University. Transaction was sold to Taylor & Francis in 2016 and merged w ...

, 2004, p. 307.

Career

Artist beginnings

In 1936, during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

, Loper started working in Delaware for the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

(WPA), rendering drawings of decorative art for the

Index of American Design The Index of American Design program of the Federal Art Project produced a pictorial survey of the crafts and decorative arts of the United States from the early colonial period to 1900. Artists working for the Index produced a collection of 18, ...

, a large archive of folk art images based in

Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

.Bob Eisler
"Portrait Of An Artist,"
''The Sunday Star'', January 27, 1952. The job required him to illustrate images of objects in American design such as toys and furniture. He produced 113 of them in total. He later credited the job with giving him his start as an artist. Three of his renderings (a Windsor chair, a toy bank and a cast-iron fire screen) were later included in the Index of Modern Design's 2002 exhibition, ''Drawing on America's Past: Folk Art, Modernism and the Index of American Design''.Linda Hales

''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', December 2, 2002. The index is currently housed at the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

in Washington, DC. Loper was encouraged to paint by his WPA co-worker Walter Pyle, the nephew of illustrator and author

Howard Pyle Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator, Painting, painter, and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life ...

. Loper began studying Howard Pyle's work at the Wilmington Public Library. He began taking the train to the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

on weekends, studying painting's great masters; self-taught, he slowly developed his own style and technique. He was employed by the Works Progress Administration Art Project from 1936–41, and at the Allied Kid leather tanning factory until 1947, at which point he became a full-time artist and teacher.

Painting

In 1937, Loper became the first African American to have a painting accepted by the

Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the arti ...

(now the Delaware Art Museum). His painting ''After a Shower'', a depiction of Wilmington on a stormy night, won honorable mention at a 1938 exhibition of the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, and was later purchased by the society for its permanent collection. He was profiled in

Howard University Howard University is a private, historically black, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and accredited by the Mid ...

professor

Alain Locke Alain LeRoy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, and educator. Distinguished in 1907 as the first African American Rhodes Scholar, Locke became known as the philosophical architect—the acknowledged " ...

's landmark 1940 book ''The Negro in Art''.''The Art of Edward L. Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters'', p. 4. In 1941, he exhibited a painting at the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially known as UD, UDel, or Delaware) is a Statutory college#Delaware, privately governed, state-assisted Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Newark, Delaware, United States. UD offers f ...

. At the time, African Americans were not allowed to attend the university. In the 1940s, Loper painted mostly landscapes and cityscapes of his neighborhood in Wilmington, in vivid colors. By the early 1950s, with a growing appreciation of the works of

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

, Loper had transitioned from creating self-described mood paintings to concentrating on color and shapes, including experimenting with a kind of kaleidoscopic

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

, refracting subjects into planes as if seen through shards of glass.''The Art of Edward L. Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters'', pp. 5-9. Loper's artistic direction was solidified in 1963, after he was invited to attend classes at the

Barnes Foundation The Barnes Foundation is an art collection and educational institution promoting the appreciation of art and horticulture. Originally in Merion, the art collection moved in 2012 to a new building on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, ...

Merion, Pennsylvania Merion Station, also known as Merion, is an unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It borders Philadelphia to its west and is one of the communities that make up the Philadelphia Main Line. Merion Station is part of Lower ...

, established by Albert C. Barnes in 1922 and home to one of the world's largest private art collections. He was first invited to study there when he met Barnes in 1946, but declined the original offer, as he was recently married with young children to care for. He was taught by Violette de Mazia to carefully analyze classical techniques at the Barnes Foundation from 1963 to 1968. When he saw

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work introduced new modes of representation, influenced avant-garde artistic movements of the early 20th century a ...

's '' The Boy in the Red Vest'', it changed the way he thought about color, having a major effect on the use and juxtaposition of color in his work. He was heavily influenced by his study of the art at the Barnes Foundation. Loper's work of the 1960s and beyond became more dramatically structured, colorful and refracted than his earlier work. The Delaware Art Museum organized Loper's first retrospective in 1996, ''Edward L. Loper: From the Prism's Edge'', covering 60 years of his work. In 2007, the University of Delaware presented ''The Art of Edward Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters'', a comprehensive retrospective.

Teaching

Loper started teaching painting in 1940.''The Art of Edward L. Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters'', pp. 14-16. Starting in the late 1940s, to escape some of the racism he experienced at home, he began traveling to

Quebec City Quebec City is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...

in Canada, where he would paint boldly-colored cityscapes. He began taking his students there every summer starting in the 1960s. Over the years he would teach at the Allied Kid Company, Delaware Art Museum,

Delaware College of Art and Design Delaware College of Art and Design (DCAD) was a private art school in Wilmington, Delaware. It was founded in 1997 through a partnership between the Pratt Institute and the Corcoran College of Art and Design. It was accredited by the Middle State ...

, Lincoln University,

Jewish Community Center A Jewish Community Center or a Jewish Community Centre (JCC) is a general recreational, social, and fraternal organization serving the Jewish community in a number of cities. JCCs promote Jewish culture and heritage through holiday celebrations, ...

in Wilmington, and finally, classes at his studio."Hagley Film on African American Painter Edward Loper, Sr., now Available Online!"
hagley.org, February 1, 2013. As a teacher, Loper was known for his charismatic, intense and demanding demeanor.

Legacy

Following his death, ''Delaware Today'' wrote of Loper, "Few local painters have achieved his level of recognition and influence, here and beyond, or have been as beloved by so many students." On November 1, 2011, Delaware senators Thomas R. Carper and Christopher A. Coons memorialized Loper as part of the ''

''. Carper stated that Loper's "talent for color broke the mold of his time, and his passion for teaching others to see through color was unsurpassed," adding that he "changed the landscape for black artists and paved the way for others who came after him." The University of Delaware inherited all of Loper's work in his possession at the time of his death. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the

University Museums at the University of Delaware The University Museums at the University of Delaware is the collective name for the University of Delaware's collections of American art, minerals, and Pre-Columbian ceramics. The museums are open to the public and are used as laboratories by U ...

's Paul R. Jones Collection of African-American Art,

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1805, it is the longest continuously operating art museum and art school in the United States. The academy's museum ...

Delaware Art Museum The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the arti ...

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art is a former art museum in Washington, D.C., that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Founded in 1869 by philanthropist William Wilson Corco ...

, Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts,

Clark-Atlanta University Clark Atlanta University (CAU or Clark Atlanta) is a private, Methodist, historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded on September19, 1865, as Atlanta University, it was the first HBCU in the Southern ...

Collection of African-American Art, Biggs Museum in Delaware, Christina Cultural Arts Center,

Muscarelle Museum of Art The Muscarelle Museum of Art is a university museum affiliated with the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While the Museum only dates to 1983, the university art collection has been in existence since its first gift – a p ...

, and the Museum of African American Art in Tampa, Florida. A Loper painting hangs in the Delaware governor's mansion, and two of Loper's paintings hung in Vice President

Joe Biden Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...

's official residence at

Number One Observatory Circle Number One Observatory Circle is the official residence of the vice president of the United States. Located on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., the house was built in 1893 for the observatory's superintendent. The ...

in Washington, DC. An oral history interview with Loper conducted on March 26, 1964 is housed at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

. Also in the archives are his papers from 1965 to 1988, and an oral history interview from May 12, 1989. ''Edward Loper: Prophet of Color'', a 35-minute documentary created for Teleduction, won a Mid-Atlantic Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary Program in 2000. In 2013, the

Hagley Museum and Library The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Po ...

produced a 22-minute documentary, ''Edward Loper: African American Painter'', based on a 1998 interview with the artist.

Personal life

Loper lived in Wilmington, Delaware for his entire life. He and his first wife, Viola Virginia Cooper, married in 1935. She died from a ruptured

ectopic pregnancy Ectopic pregnancy is a complication of pregnancy in which the embryo attaches outside the uterus. Signs and symptoms classically include abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding, but fewer than 50 percent of affected women have both of these sympto ...

in 1944. They had three children. In 1945, he married Claudine Bruton. They later divorced. He and Janet Neville were married in 1986, and were together until his death in 2011. Loper's son, Edward Loper Jr., is also an accomplished painter. In 1950, Loper designed and built a three-bedroom ranch house in Wilmington. The Lopers bought the parcel of land for $100 in 1941. In designing the house, he was influenced by

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed List of Frank Lloyd Wright works, more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key ...

and

Japanese architecture has been typified by wooden structures, elevated slightly off the ground, with tiled or thatched roofs. Sliding doors ('' fusuma'') and other traditional partitions were used in place of walls, allowing the internal configuration of a space ...

. In the living room, Loper painted a wall mural of female figures. The garage was converted into a studio, where Loper gave weekly art lessons in his later years.

Exhibitions (selected)

* Whyte Gallery, Washington, DC, 1938 * Solo exhibition, Howard High School, Wilmington, DE, 1939 * ''Art of the American Negro'' (1851-1940),

American Negro Exposition The American Negro Exposition, also known as the Black World's Fair and the Diamond Jubilee Exposition, was a world's fair held in Chicago from July until September in 1940, to celebrate the 75th anniversary (also known as a diamond jubilee) of t ...

, Chicago, IL, 1940 * Solo exhibition, University of Delaware, 1941 * Solo exhibitions, Carlen Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 1941, 1947 * ''The Negro Artist Comes of Age'',

Albany Institute of History and Art Albany, derived from the Gaelic for Scotland, most commonly refers to: * Albany, New York, the capital of the State of New York and largest city of this name * Albany, Western Australia, a port city in the Great Southern region Albany may also ref ...

, Albany, NY, 1945 * Two-man exhibition with

Andrew Wyeth Andrew Newell Wyeth ( ; July 12, 1917 – January 16, 2009) was an American visual artist and one of the best-known American artists of the middle 20th century. Though he considered himself to be an "abstractionist," Wyeth was primarily a realis ...

, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 1949 * Solo exhibition, Warehouse Gallery, Arden, DE, 1957 * ''Paintings and Sculpture by Frank DelleDonne, Edward Loper, and Charles Parks'', Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1960 * Solo exhibition,

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, ...

, Baltimore, MD, 1965 * Solo exhibition, Little Studio, New York, NY, 1967 * Solo exhibition,

West Chester University West Chester University (also known as West Chester, WCU, or WCUPA, and officially as West Chester University of Pennsylvania) is a public research university located in and around West Chester, Pennsylvania. The university is accredited by the ...

, West Chester, PA, 1969 * Edward Loper Sr./Edward Loper Jr. exhibition,

, 1971 * Solo exhibition, La Galerie Zanettin, Quebec City, Quebec, 1980 * Solo exhibition, Hardcastle Gallery, Wilmington, DE, 1990 * ''A Tribute to the Teacher'', Christina Cultural Center, Wilmington, DE, 1995 * ''Edward L. Loper: From the Prism's Edge'',

, Wilmington, DE, 1996 * ''Drawing on America's Past: Folk Art, Modernism and the Index of American Design'', Index of Modern Design, Washington, DC, 2002 * ''African-American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, VII'', Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY, 2000 * ''The Art of Edward Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters,''

, Newark, DE, 2007 * ''The Edward L. Loper, Sr. Collection: A Centennial Exhibition,''

, Newark, DE, 2016 * ''The Loper Tradition: Paintings by Edward Loper, Sr. and Edward Loper, Jr.'',

, 2019.

Honors and awards

* Honorable mention, Annual Delaware Show, Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1937 * Second place award, ''Twelfth Street Garden'', Clark Atlanta University, 1942 * Honorable mention, Annual Delaware Show, Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1943 * Yarnell Abbott prize,

Philadelphia Art Alliance The Philadelphia Art Alliance at University of the Arts was a multidisciplinary arts center located in the Rittenhouse Square section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the oldest multidisciplinary arts center in the United States for visual, ...

, Philadelphia, PA, 1944 * First prize, ''Under the Highline'', Wilmington Society of Fine Arts, 1947 * Outstanding Delaware Black Citizen Award, University of Delaware, 1980 * Achievement Award, Christina Cultural Arts Center, 1986 * Outstanding Black Delawarean, Delaware State College, 1986 * Edward Loper Sr. Day, Delaware, April 7, 1996 * Governor's Award for the Arts, Delaware State Arts Council, 1998 * Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Delaware State University, 1998 *Art Educators of Delaware Honoree, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, 2001 * Honorary Degree of Humanities, University of Delaware, 2004''The Art of Edward L. Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters'', p. x. * Lifetime Achievement Award,

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...

, 2004 * Ambassador of Goodwill Award, City of Wilmington, DE, 2004

Bibliography

Art books

* ''Edward L. Loper: From the Prism's Edge'' (Delaware Art Museum, 1996) * ''The Art of Seeing: Selected Masterworks of Edward L. Loper, Sr.'' (Asgard Press, 1999) *
The Art of Edward L. Loper, Sr.: On the Path of the Masters
' (University Museums of the University of Delaware, 2007)

Biography

* Marilyn A. Bauman, ''The Prophet of Color: A Disciple's Reflections'' (APU Publishing Group, 1999) * Brian Scott Miller, ''Edward L. Loper, Sr., Artist and Educator: An Oral History'' (Kent State University Master's Thesis, 1998)

Filmography

* ''Edward Loper: Prophet of Color'' (dir. Sharon Baker, 35 minutes, 1999) *

' (dir. Alonzo Crawford, 22 minutes, 2013)

References

External links

Works by Edward L. Loper, Sr.
in

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

catalog * Full transcript:
Oral history interview with Edward L. Loper, 1964 Mar. 26, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
' {{DEFAULTSORT:Loper, Edward L., Sr. 2011 deaths 1916 births 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Artists from Wilmington, Delaware American Impressionist painters Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) faculty Federal Art Project artists 20th-century African-American painters 21st-century African-American artists 20th-century American male artists Howard High School of Technology alumni