HARRY ROSELAND 1866-1950

Size:  15 1/2 x 23 3/4
Medium:  oil on canvas
 
 
 
 
oseland, born in Brooklyn, New York, matured as an artist while waves of change were sweeping over the art world.  Largely self-taught, he chose to paint what he saw.  He received some education in art under James Barnard Whittaker in Brooklyn, and at first painted some landscapes and still lifes, but his natural flair was for telling a story in his paintings.  His subject matter was at first highly sentimental and heavily influenced by fashionable taste: smartly turned-out young women, old folks, and idealized farm scenes.  He abandoned the mawkishness that is the downfall of so many self-educated artists when he found a topic that was close to home and yet largely unnoticed: the post-Civil War blacks who formed the underpinning of Northeastern society.