Colin Campbell Cooper

Colin Campbell Cooper painted cities upward. Skyscrapers under construction, Broadway canyons, the Flatiron seen from street level with traffic small beneath it. He was among the first American painters to treat the modern high rise city as a proper subject rather than an eyesore.

Architectural training shows in the drawing, which stays accurate even when the paint is loose. He worked in Philadelphia, New York, then Europe and India, painting cathedrals and palaces with the same structural interest.

He and his wife survived the Titanic sinking in 1912, and he later painted the rescue ship Carpathia. California drew him permanently in 1921, where he taught in Santa Barbara and turned to gardens, missions and coastal light. The New York pictures remain the strongest part of the output.