AFA Autumn 2018

Autumn 100 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Augustus B. Koopman (1869–1914), Beach Scene, 1912. Oil on canvas, 25¾ x 26⅛ inches. Augustus Koopman, a native of North Carolina, attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before moving to Paris in 1887. After five years of study at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, Koopman established his own painting classes in Paris, catering to expatriate female students, one of whom he married in 1897. To support his growing family, Koopman relocated to London from 1902 to 1906, where he earned steady income painting portrait commissions. After 1906, however, he settled back in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris, spending winters there and the warmer months on the northern coast of France near Étaples. Koopman was good friends with such influential progressive American painters as Robert Henri and William Glackens. He exhibited regularly in both Europe and in American museums, including the National Academy of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago. He won prizes and medals in numerous international competitions, and, through his teaching, he influenced aspiring young artists. But, when he unexpectedly died at his Étaples studio in his mid-forties, his hard-earned reputation expired just as suddenly. His paintings were hastily and poorly stored in a Parisian attic at the onset of World War I. Reclaimed over a decade later, many were irretrievably lost to poor environmental conditions.