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Donelson Hoopes: 73, Curator and Historian of American Painting, Dies

Donelson Hoopes, an authority on 19th- and 20th-century American paintings and a curator who helped restore the reputation of John Singer Sargent in the 1960's, died on Feb. 22 at a hospital in Bangor, Me. He was 73 and lived in Steuben, on the Maine coast.

The cause was complications of a stroke, said Joerg-Henner Lotze, Mr. Hoopes's friend and executor.

In books and articles, Mr. Hoopes, an art historian, wrote extensively about the watercolors of artists like Sargent, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, characterizing their work as "the American medium."

Donelson Farquhar Hoopes was born in Philadelphia and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. After service in the Army he studied at the University of Florence and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1960, when he was named director of the Portland Museum of Art in Maine.

Read entire article at NYT