Hector Hoppin

Courtland Hector Hoppin (March 12, 1906 – January 28, 1974) was an American artist, photographer and pioneer in the field of animated film. The works produced by Hector Hoppin and partner Tony Gross are studied today due to their artistry and as a reflection of the times in which they were created. Hoppin was born March 12, 1906, into a family of wealth and talent. He was the only child of Dorothy Woodville Rockhill and Dr. Joseph Clark Hoppin (1870–1925), who was a highly regarded archeologist, who taught at Bryn Mawr. His maternal grandfather, William Woodville Rockhill, was a diplomat and considered the first Westerner to gain audience with the Dalai Lama.

His paternal grandfather, Dr. Courtland Hoppin (1834–1876), for whom he was named, was one of twelve children born into a prominent and talented Providence, RI family. He and his brother Washington Hoppin, MD were homeopathic physicians. In 1863 Courtland married Mary Frances Clark (1842–1934), daughter of Joseph Washington Clark (1810–1892) and Eleanor Arnold Jackson Clark (1815–1896). Joseph Clark was a Boston investor, who purchased several hundred acres of land in Pomfret, CT, on the west side of Pomfret Street, in 1888. He built a large summer house there, called "La Plaisance," and at the same time, Mary Frances Clark Hoppin, recently widowed, built a house nearby. These two houses still stand, and are included in the Pomfret Street Historic District. They are now both owned by Pomfret School.

In about 1892, Mary Frances Clark Hoppin built a much larger house on Deerfield Road, at the southwestern end of her father's property, next to her sister-in-law. She called the house "Courtlands." In 1900, after the main building of Pomfret School burned, she gave her first house to the school, and had it moved across the road, to be on the school's property. The house is now called Robinson House, and is the Admissions house for the school. Courtlands still stands, and houses the offices of LIUNA Training & Education Fund.

Courtland Hoppin, the younger, was educated at Pomfret School (1923), Harvard University and the University of Cambridge in England, where he obtained his master's degree. He subsequently studied art in Paris and served as Art Director of London Films until the outbreak of World War II. At about this time Courtland adopted the nom de plume of "Hector," and was sometimes called "Hector Hoppin." Following the war, he studied with psychologist Carl Jung in Switzerland, and worked in the area of clinical psychology in New York City during the 1950s.

In 1948, Hector Hoppin published The Psychology of the Artist.He retired to Lido Key in Sarasota, Florida in 1958, where he and his wife Marion were benefactors of New College of Florida, including the endowment of a chair in Asian Studies.