James R. Hopkins was born on May 17, 1877, in Irwin and graduated from Mechanicsburg High School in 1895. Influenced in childhood by his mother, Nettie, a self-taught watercolorist, he first enrolled at The Ohio State University to study electrical engineering before turning to art in 1898 at the Art Institute of Cincinnati, where he studied under Frank Duveneck and developed the academic draftsmanship seen in his work. After two years he moved to New York City as a medical illustrator, then to Paris, where he enrolled in the Academy Colarossi and opened a studio at 55 Rue de Dantzig. In Paris he flourished, married Edna Boies, whom he had met at the Cincinnati Art Institute, and formed friendships with Pierre Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. He was accepted as an Associate in the Societe Nationale des Beaux, making him one of the few American figure painters of the period considered talented enough to exhibit in the Salon's prestigious shows. With Edna, who was noted in the revival of the wood-block print, he traveled to Egypt, Italy, China, Japan, and Ceylon, and those travels strongly influenced the designs in his art. After returning to the United States, he briefly taught at the Cincinnati Art Institute before becoming chairman of the Department of Fine Arts at Ohio State University, serving until 1947. He retired to the family farm, Darbyland, near Mechanicsburg, where he died on January 23, 1969, and he became noted both as a gifted human figure painter and as an able academic administrator, especially for his pioneering regional paintings of the Cumberland Mountain people.