Samuel W. Rowse

{{Short description|American illustrator, lithographer and painter}}

File:Eastman Johnson, The Funding Bill - Portrait of Two Men, 1881.jpg, The Funding Bill also known as Portrait of Two Men, 1881. Depicts Robert W. Rutherford and Samuel W. Rowse (right).]]

Samuel Worcester Rowse (January 29, 1822 – May 24, 1901) was an American illustrator, lithographer, and painter. He was most famous for his drawings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Rowse is also well known for his lithograph, The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia.

Early life

Rowse was born in Bath, Maine on January 29, 1822.{{cite book|author=Thomas William Herringshaw|title=Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century: Accurate and Succinct Biographies of Famous Men and Women in All Walks of Life who are Or Have Been the Acknowledged Leaders of Life and Thought of the United States Since Its Formation ...|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xxg7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA806|year=1904|publisher=American Publishers' Association|page=806}}{{cite book|author=Bowdoin College|title=Report of the President|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jMLOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA49|year=1920|publisher=Bowdoin College.|page=49}} He worked in Maine as an engraver.{{cite book|author1=Kevin J. Avery|author2=Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)|title=American Drawings and Watercolors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qNUzffcMZTMC&pg=PA338|date=1 January 2002|publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art|isbn=978-1-58839-060-8|pages=338–339}}

Works

Image:RWEmerson2.jpg]]

In 1852, Rowse worked for a lithographer and then opened a studio in Boston, Massachusetts, due to the demand for his crayon (pastel) and charcoal portraits. He developed a reputation for his drawings of people in the news.{{cite book|author=Katherine Sherwood Bonner McDowell|title=A Sherwood Bonner Sampler, 1869-1884: What a Bright, Educated, Witty, Lively, Snappy Young Woman Can Say on a Variety of Topics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PKnzjcs_2fAC&pg=PA66|year=2000|publisher=Univ. of Tennessee Press|isbn=978-1-57233-067-2|pages=66–}} Rowse boarded with the family of Ralph Waldo Emerson in the summer of 1854, and while there sketched Henry David Thoreau, which was considered to be a good likeness by Sophia Thoreau. The drawing, which had hung in the Thoreau house, was donated to the Concord Free Public Library by Amos Bronson Alcott after he purchased the house in 1877. In June 1858,{{cite book|author=Ralph Waldo Emerson|title=Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1854-1861|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tpEOwGSLFa0C&pg=PA204|year=1978|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-48477-1|page=204}} Rowse made a sketch of Emerson, considered by William James Stillman to be "the most masterly" depiction of him. The drawing is displayed in Emerson'a former home in Concord. Rowse is best known for these images.{{cite book|author=Tiffany K. Wayne|title=Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hckauAdkix0C&pg=PA242|date=1 January 2009|publisher=Infobase (Publishing|isbn=978-1-4381-0916-9|pages=242–243}}

File:boxbrown.jpg, {{circa|1850s}}]]

Copies of his lithograph of The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown at Philadelphia were used by anti-slavery activists prior to and during the American Civil War (1861–1865) to raise funds for the Underground Railroad and other anti-slavery campaigns. Henry Box Brown was a slave who escaped from Richmond, Virginia in 1849 by having himself shipped overland express to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a small crate, delivered to Passmore Williamson, Reverend James Miller McKim, and other members of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. His journey took 27 hours and was considered a miracle of the improved private mail system.{{citation needed|date=November 2014}}

In 1864 Rowse joined the Saturday Club, of which Emerson was a member. Rowse went to London in 1872 with mathematician and philosopher Chauncey Wright. He met John Ruskin and American cultural critic, Charles Eliot Norton while there. He moved to New York City in 1880. Rowse is depicted in his friend, Eastman Johnson's painting of two men, The Funding Bill, which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection.

He was commissioned to make portraits of James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. and Frances Appleton Longfellow (1859), which is in the Longfellow Trust Collection.{{cite book|author=Bowdoin College|title=Report of the President|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jMLOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PAvii|year=1920|publisher=Bowdoin College.|page=vii}} Generally the portraits were drawings in black and white, and in crayon. Other subjects were the family of Frederic Edwin Church,{{Cite book|last=Carr|first=Gerald L.|title=Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonne of Works at Olana State Historic Site, Volume I.|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1994|isbn=978-0521385404|location=Cambridge|pages=8}} Arthur Hugh Clough{{Cite web|title=Arthur Hugh Clough|url=https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw01352/Arthur-Hugh-Clough|last=|first=|date=|website=National Portrait Gallery, London|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=May 20, 2020}} and Howard Dwight.{{Cite web|title=From the Harvard Art Museums' collections, Capt. Howard Dwight (1837-1863)|url=https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/304888|last=|first=|date=|website=Harvard Art Museums|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=May 20, 2020}} Annie Adams Fields, wife of Boston publisher James T. Fields, sat for a black crayon drawing by Rowse and noted the artist was "eccentric but true and interesting".Gollin, Rita K. Annie Adams Fields: Woman of Letters. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002: 43. {{ISBN|978-1-55849-313-1}}

He made portraits of children, which exhibited at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. in January, 1902. A book was published that year entitled Ideal Children's Heads in Crayon and Oil.{{cite book | title=Ideal Children's Heads in Crayon and Oil | author=S. W. Rowse | location=New York | publisher=M. Knoedler & Co. | year= 1902 | oclc=79734623 }}

Rowse died in Morristown, New Jersey on May 24, 1901.{{cite book | chapter=Samuel Worcester Rowse|title=Benezit Dictionary of Artists | isbn=978-0-19977-378-7 |date=March 1, 2006|last1=Pr |first1=Oxford Univ |publisher=Oup USA }}

References

External links

[http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=Samuel+Rowse&image.x=43&image.y=9 Samuel Rowse's works], Smithsonian Institution Research Information System

Category:1822 births

Category:1901 deaths

Category:American artists

Samuel W. Rowse

Early life

Works

References

Further reading

External links