Louis Loeb followed the example of an older brother and entered the lithography trade at age thirteen. He worked as an apprentice at the Cleveland firm of Johns and Company for six years, using his free time to organize and manage a drawing class. Moving to New York at the end of his apprenticeship, he took night classes at the Art Students League under George de Forest Brush. Meanwhile, he obtained work as a lithographer and illustrator, saving money for a trip to Paris. Loeb left for France in 1890, studying first at the Acad‚mie Julian, then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jean-L‚on G‚r"me. While abroad, he was commissioned to execute drawings for the Century magazine.
Back in the United States by 1893, Loeb spent time in New York and in Knoxville, TN with his mother and sister. The Century sent him back to France in 1896-7 to illustrate a series of plays presented at Avignon. Such commissions advanced his reputation, and he soon became one of the country's highest paid illustrators, with much of his most important work published by Harper Brothers.
Loeb was also a painter, however, and his allegorical figural works brought him honors at the turn of the century. Election to the Society of American Artists came in 1900, and associate membership at the National Academy followed a year later. He won the Academy's Second Hallgarten Prize in 1902 and the Society's Webb and Carnegie Prizes in 1903 and 1905, respectively. Two years after being elected an Academician, he served on the NAD Council. He also was named to a teaching post at the Art Students League.
During the last years of his life, Loeb suffered from diabetes. An active Zionist, he continued his work on the executive committee of the Jewish Territorial Organization. He died at his summer home while on vacation. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 1909 at the Macbeth Gallery, NYC.
