Colin Campbell Cooper, Taj Mahal

Colin Campbell Cooper, Taj Mahal.
Colin Campbell Cooper (1856-1937) was an American artist born in Philadelphia, PA. Cooper studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is best known as an impressionist painter who painted skyscrapers from major American cities including New York and Philadelphia. Cooper was also an avid traveler documenting scenes from Europe and Asia. In the latter half of his life he focused primarily on representations of the West Coast. Cooper moved to Santa Barbara in 1921 where he remained until his death in 1937. 
In the early twentieth century, Cooper began painting images of India. Adhering to the grand tradition of Western artists representing Indian monuments and landscapes, he painted naturalistic images of the Himalayas, palaces, and tombs. He painted numerous versions of the Taj Mahal in different lighting. The Taj Mahal is a Mughal monument in the Indian city Agra. Shah Jahan, a Mughal emperor, built it in the seventeenth century as a monument to his wife. The Mughal dynasty was the ruling dynasty prior to British colonization and the Taj Mahal was one of the few Indian monuments that British architectural scholars identified as outside of the trajectory of architectural decline.
Sara Miller McCune Collection

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