Meadowlark Gallery: The Artist Biographies


Robert Elmer Lougheed (1910-1982)
Robert Elmer Lougheed was born in Gray County, Ontario in 1910 and died in 1982. As a child on a Canadian farm, Lougheed sketched animals from nature and at nineteen was employed to do illustrations for a catalog. He went to the Ontario College of Arts and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Montreal and worked as a commercial artist on the Toronto Star for six years. To perfect his skills, he studied with Frank Vincent DuMond and Dean Cornwell at the Art Students League in New York City, supporting himself by continuing in commercial art. One product was Mobil's "Flying Red Horse." To get closer to his peers, he moved to a barn in Westport, Connecticut, a town where sixty artists lived. When they were starting out, fellow painter John Clymer told Lougheed to "forget doing those horses. Do pretty girls. That's what's selling." Lougheed declares that he "never did learn to paint girls. I kept on doing horses and cornered the market for ads that called for animals. Now, John is doing horses." He was a member of the Cowboy Artists of America.
View high resolution images of works by Robert Elmer Lougheed when available.