Edward L. Loper, Sr.

Edward L. Loper Sr.
Loper circa 1947.
Born	(1916-04-07)April 7, 1916 Wilmington, DE
Died	October 11, 2011(2011-10-11) (aged 95) Wilmington, DE
Nationality	American
Education	Barnes Foundation
Known for	Painting
Movement	Impressionism Colourist painting
Spouse(s)	Viola Virginia Cooper (1935-44) Claudine Bruton (1945-1986) Janet Neville-Loper (1986-2011)

Edward L. Loper Sr. (April 7, 1916 – October 11, 2011) was an African American artist and teacher from Delaware, best known for his vibrant palette and juxtaposition of colors. He taught painting for almost 70 years.

Loper was born to a poor family on the east side of Wilmington, Delaware, in a racially mixed section known as Frogtown. At the time of his birth, his mother was 16. Loper was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother. Growing up, he did not receive formal artistic training. He attended Howard High School, where he was an All-State football and basketball player. At the time, this was the only high school in Delaware that African Americans were allowed to attend. After graduating from high school in 1934, he had to forego an athletic scholarship at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania to start working in order to help his family financially.

In 1936, during the Great Depression, Loper started working in Delaware for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), rendering drawings of decorative art for the Index of American Design, a large archive of folk art images based in Washington, DC. The job required him to illustrate images of objects in American design such as toys and furniture. He produced 113 of them in total. He later credited the job with giving him his start as an artist. Three of his renderings (a Windsor chair, a toy bank and a cast-iron fire screen) were later included in the Index of Modern Design's 2002 exhibition, Drawing on America's Past: Folk Art, Modernism and the Index of American Design. The index is currently housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Loper was encouraged to paint by his WPA co-worker Walter Pyle, the nephew of illustrator and author Howard Pyle. Loper began studying Howard Pyle's work at the Wilmington Public Library. He began taking the train to the Philadelphia Museum of Art on weekends, studying painting's great masters; self-taught, he slowly developed his own style and technique. He was employed by the Works Progress Administration Art Project from 1936–41, and at the Allied Kid leather tanning factory until 1947, at which point he became a full-time artist and teacher.