This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Augustus Hoppin, the son of a China trade merchant, was a book and periodical illustrator and inventor, noted for the aesthetic beauty of his work and for the invention of a process of chemical engraving that revolutionized newspaper illustration by facilitating daily illustrations. For a brief period, he was a Survey Artist, and unlike many of them, injected humor into his drawings.
Hoppin earned degrees from Brown University and Harvard Law School, but quit his law practice in Rhode Island to become an illustrator.
In 1850, as a beginning illustrator, he was on assignment with the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey party, led by John Russell Bartlett. The goal was to map the boundary between Texas and Mexico following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo that ended the Mexican War. This assignment took Hoppin into Arizona, and in contrast to his artist companion Henry Pratt, he drew humorous sketches of the trip's events as well as the expected realistic depictions.
In 1854-55, leaving the Bartlett survey early because of its disorganization linked to conflicts with directors in Washington, Hoppin toured Europe. He studied the Old Masters, and Egypt, and then, drawing on what he had learned and observed from these travels, he wrote and illustrated travel books that were considered unusual for their beauty. Art historian Henry Tuckerman wrote: "Some of the elaborate drawings surpass in finish, force and beauty, anything of the kind produced in this country."
In 1872, Hoppin's drawings were used to show his unique process of chemical engraving. His ilustrations are in Washington Irving's Sketch Book, and two of Hoppin's drawings are in John Bartlett's personal narrative of his 1850 expedition party.
Sources:
Peggy and Harold Samuels, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West
John and Deborah Powers, Texas Painters, Sculptors and Graphic Artists
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