Henry Augustus Loop

Background

Henry Augustus Loop was born on September 9, 1831 at Hillsdale, New York, United States. He was the son of George H. and Angelica M. (Downing) Loop and a descendant of Gerlach Leupp who emigrated to America from the Netherlands.

Education

Loop received his early education in a school for boys at Great Barrington, Massachusetts. At the age of nineteen he went to New York City and began the study of his art under Henry Peters Gray, with whom he remained for about a year. About 1857 he went to Paris and continued his studies under Thomas Couture.

Career

Loop first exhibited in the national National Academy of Design in 1851. From about 1860 he was one of the most regular exhibitors in the annual exhibitions of the Academy for some thirty years. His genre and mythological subjects, though doubtless somewhat academic in conception and execution, were marked by grace, refinement, and a pleasant vein of sentiment, and were consequently popular. Among the most interesting of these performances were his "Undine" (1863), which was warmly praised by the critics of the time; his "Aphrodite, " which was bought by Collis P. Huntington after being shown at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia; his "Italian Minstrel, " which appeared in the Paris Salon of 1868; and "Love's Crown, " which was given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1898, by his wife. This last-named piece represents a female figure clad in loose, flowing white draperies, and crowned with a wreath of flowers.

Loop also found steady employment as a portrait painter. The artist went abroad again in 1867 for the purpose of visiting the principal Continental art centers and was away from home for a year and a half. With this exception his professional life was passed in New York, where for many years he had a studio on Madison Avenue. He died at Lake George in his sixty-fifth year.

Achievements

• Henry Augustus Loop was best-known as a portraitist. Among his sitters were Bishop Gregory T. Bedell of Ohio, Anson Phelps Stokes, J. M. Ward, Russell Sage, William G. Choate, Worthington Whittredge, and other well-known men.

Membership

In 1861 Loop was made a member of the National Academy of Design. He was also a member of the Artists' Fund Society and the Century Club.

Connections

In 1865 Loop married Jennette Shepherd Harrison of New Haven, Connecticut (1840 - 1909), one of his most talented pupils. She became an accomplished portraitist and an associate of the National Academy. They had three daughters, one of whom, Edith, also became a portrait painter.

Father:

George H. Loop

Mother:

Angelica M. (Downing) Loop

Spouse:

Jennette Shepherd Harrison

Daughter:

Edith Loop

References

• Artists Of The Nineteenth Century And Their Works: A Handbook Containing Two Thousand And Fifty Biographical Sketches (German Edition)
• Painting and Sculpture in the Collection of National Academy of Design (v. 1)