InThe Kelley House Colin Campbell Cooper applies his delicate, atmospheric painting style to this historic hotel located on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Most likely painted sometime between 1902 and 1920––the period when Cooper was most actively painting architecture––The Kelley House embodies the artist’s interest in allowing the form of the building to determine his composition. The edifice fills the canvas: the pastel palette gives it an ethereal glow yet the overall mass of the building firmly grounds it in reality. That painting architecture was Cooper’s strongest point is made evident in his treatment of the composition, which despite its small scale echoes the simplicity and grandeur of this iconic hotel.

In William Gerdt’s and Deborah Epstein Solon’s new exhibition catalogue on Cooper, East Coast / West Coast and Beyond: Colin Campbell Cooper, American Impressionist, the authors give great emphasis to the importance of the artist’s paintings of architecture. And indeed this subject earned Cooper his greatest renown. He began painting architecture during his summers abroad in Europe in the late nineteenth century; however, Cooper himself said that he started painting the subject in earnest in 1902. New York skyscrapers and public monuments were some of his most acclaimed subjects, but he was catholic in his interest in architectural form. He wrote: “to confine oneself to one class of subject seems to me to narrow the vision and limit the endeavor.”

Colin Campbell Cooper was born in Philadelphia to wealthy parents, who encouraged him to pursue a career in the arts. Like so many of his contemporaries he was greatly inspired by the variety and caliber of objects on display at the 1876 Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia. After studying with Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy he traveled to Paris to take classes at the Academie Julian. It was during this trip that he first became interested in painting Gothic cathedrals and medieval architecture in general. Unfortunately, many of these early works were destroyed in a fire in 1896.

Upon his return from Europe he taught at the Drexel Institute from 1895 to 1898, when he moved to New York City. While there he met another great artistic influence, Childe Hassam. The delicacy of Hassam’s palette and line is certainly reflected in Cooper’s; however, Cooper was more interested in painting the majesty of architecture and the landscape, whereas Hassam’s depictions were more intimate. The success of Cooper's style resulted from his ability to imbue his canvases with picturesque charm while avoiding sentimentality.

Secured by his family’s wealth, Cooper traveled the world with his wife, Emma Lambert Cooper, in search of new and interesting subject matter. The couple first went to California in 1915 and wintered in Los Angeles. By 1920 Emma had died and Cooper settled in Santa Barbara permanently, where he became the Dean of Painting at the Santa Barbara Community School of Arts. During this time he focused on West Coast subject matter and developed the "California Style” of watercolor painting, in which he used the medium boldly and aggressively. This experimental approach to the watercolor medium, which traditionally was used in a much more subtle fashion, earned Cooper great acclaim. However, it was his architectural paintings that continued to garner him with the most praise. In the Brush and Palette magazine, a writer wrote: "Cooper has the natural gift of seeing the beauty of what to most people are prosaic structures, and the patience and persistence to perfect his delineation of street and building, is the secret of his success as an architectural painter."

Cooper was elected as a full status academician at the National Academy of Design in 1912. Throughout his career he exhibited widely and was a member of such esteemed institutions as the New York Watercolor Club, Art Club of Philadelphia, American Watercolor Society, Fellowship Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Lotus Club, National Arts Club, American Federation of Arts and others.