James Topping timeline

Topping, James[1]

BORN: February 25,1879 Cleator Moor, Cumberland, England[2]

DIED: July 24, 1948 Oak Park, IL[3]

MARRIED: October 16, 1904 Emily Allen, of Birks Road, Cleator Moor[4] and Cripple Creek, CO, deceased 1944

TRAINING

Grade school at Moor Row School

1890 John Adamson and Mr. Herd of Whitehaven, England[5]

1894-1896 CumberlandTechnical School of Art, England

1904, 1909, 1912-1914 Art Institute of Chicago with Louis Wilson

[1]His friends called him “Jimmie”. Letter to Mrs. Bewley Topping Miles from Eugene J. McKee, IHAP Library, 12/7/1948. For a good biographical account of his life see Doris Lockerman called it the “Oak Park Art league medal” in “James Topping Achieves Fame For Skyscapes,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 9/6/1936.

[2]His parents were James and Anne nee Bewley Topping of 56 Jacktrees Road. His father was an engineer at the Cleator Moor ironworks and died in 1922.

[3]“ RITES TO BE TUESDAY FOR JAMES TOPPING, EMINENT PAINTER, 69” Chicago Tribune, 7/26/1948, part 3., p.6.

“A Cleator Moor Artist,” Whitehaven News, no date, c.July 1938 by inference.[4]

[5]The artist first set out to study music in 1887, but turned to art at this young age. Adamson, died only one year later. “James Topping Turns From Music To Painting,” Palette & Chisel, Vol. III, March 1926. Op. cit., Whitehaven News, no date, c.July 1938 by inference.