List Of Portraits Lithographs - Etchings Mezzotints
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
Max Rosenthal was a Polish-American lithographer and mezzotint engraver. He was one of the founders of the Sketch Club.
Background
Max Rosenthal was born in Turck, near the city of Lodz, in what then was Russian Poland. He was the youngest of six children of Wolf and Rebecca Rosenthal. His father was a chemist and glass manufacturer, his mother a talented amateur sculptor, and his eldest brother, David, an artist, who is said to have surreptitiously painted altar pieces for churches near his home.
Education
When he was twelve, young Rosenthal was sent to Paris to study art and escape conscription in the Imperial Russian Army, which recognized the Jewish rule of regarding a boy as of age at thirteen. In Paris he was apprenticed to Martin Thurwanger, a lithographer, and in 1849 was brought by Thurwanger to the United States, where color lithography was struggling in the darkness of ignorance. Though his master remained only eighteen months, Rosenthal decided to stay with his elder brother, Louis, who was living in Philadelphia. He studied in the school of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Career
Rosenthal afterwards worked for a time in the establishment of Napoleon Sarony in New York. When Louis Rosenthal started his own business about 1850, Max returned to Philadelphia to work for him and subsequently entered into partnership with him, working chiefly in chromolithography, then a comparatively new field.
Within a short time Max Rosenthal produced the illustrations for C. W. Webber's The Hunter-Naturalist (1851) and in the same year made some color lithographs for H. L. Stephens' The Comic Natural History of the Human Race (1851). For Matthias W. Baldwin, the locomotive builder, he produced large color lithographs of some of his locomotives.
During the first years of the Civil War, Rosenthal followed the Army of the Potomac, making sketches of the camps which he published in lithographic reproductions. About 1870 he began to make a series of lithographic portraits for such collectors as Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet and David McN. Stauffer of New York, and E. Coppee Mitchell and Ferdinand J. Dreer of Pennsylvania; these, about two hundred in all, were copies of portraits of distinguished Americans of whom no engraved portraits existed.
About 1882 he began to etch, and before he retired from that field had produced about a hundred and fifty portraits of eminent American and British officers of the Revolutionary period. It was not until 1892, however, that he began the really important work of his artistic life. In that year he began experiments in mezzotint engraving and, having mastered it, devoted most of his remaining years to the production of important mezzotint engravings. He won so conspicuous a place among American engravers in this field that his reputation is likely to rest upon these achievements, though he turned to painting toward the end of his career. The majority of his mezzotint plates were portraits usually of eminent American statesmen, generals, and jurists.
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
Membership
Member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
Connections
In 1859 Rosenthal had been married in Philadelphia to Caroline Rosenthal, who, though of the same name, was not related to him. Their son Albert became a portrait painter.