Louis Loeb

Background

Louis Loeb was born on November 7, 1866 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. His parents were Alexander and Sarah (Ehrman) Loeb.

Education

Loeb took evening classes in sketching at the Cleveland Art Club. In 1889 he went to Paris to study art under Lefebvre, Constant, and Gérôme.

Career

At the age of thirteen Loeb found employment in a lithographing establishment. He then went to New York and entered the Art Students' League, of which he was later to become the president. He soon began to send his works to the exhibitions, but the first official recognition he received was an honorable mention at the Salon of 1895, Paris, when he was almost thirty, for his "Dreamer" and a portrait. His canvas "Woman with Poppies" was shown at the Paris Salon, at the Society of American Artists' exhibition and at the Pennsylvania Academy.

It was also in the nineties that he began to come before the public as an illustrator for magazines and books. He illustrated for the Century Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (beginning November 1893); John Fox's "Cumberland Vendetta" (beginning June 1894); Langdon E. Mitchell's "Lucinda" (May 1895); Francis Marion Crawford's "Via Crucis" (beginning November 1898); two or three papers by Thomas A. Janvier; and many other single pieces or series.

In 1896 he took a studio in New York where the rest of his life was passed. He was made an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1901 and became an academician in 1906. He conducted antique and life classes in the Art Students' League. His "Temple of the Winds" was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and "The Siren" (1904) became the property of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Isham found his paintings academic, and a little oversweet; but that criticism does not apply to his black-and-white works. Interesting testimony as to his practice is supplied by William A. Coffin, who states that Loeb never placed his works before the public until he believed he had expressed in them the last word he was capable of in thought and execution. None of his illustrations give the measure of his imaginative power quite so well as the drawings he made to accompany Thomas A. Janvier's paper on "The Comédie Française at Orange, " in the Century for June 1895. The event was of singular artistic interest. The leading actors of the Théâtre Français presented 14dipus and Antigone in the majestic Roman theatre at Orange. Loeb's nocturnal motives, especially his "Mademoiselle Bréval Singing the 'Hymn to Pallas Athene' " and his "Entrance of the Upper Tier, " are uncommonly impressive in their light-and-shade effects, and have something of grandeur and mystery which one does not often meet with in illustrations. Loeb's brief but brilliant career came to an untimely end at Canterbury, New Hampshire, in 1909.

Achievements

• His work "Temple of the Winds" (1898), a characteristic classical theme, was the most widely known of his pictures. In 1897 he received the third-class medal of the Paris Salon for his "Woman with Poppies" and "Fireflies. " Between 1901 and 1906 he received eight medals for his paintings and drawings.

Membership

He was a member of the Society of American Artists, the Society of Illustrators, the Architectural League of New York.

Connections

Father:

Alexander Loeb

Mother:

Sarah (Ehrman) Loeb

References

• The history of American painting