illustrator lithographer painter
Samuel Worcester Rowse was born at Bath, Maine, one of six children of Edward and Mercy (Blake) Rowse. The family, its name more usually spelled Rouse, is genealogically interesting, coming down from Capt. Augustus Rouse of the Dunkirk. Samuel was baptized June 23, 1822 (Records of the Winter Street Congregational Church, Bath). The family a little later moved to Augusta.
He went to the school in Augusta and later he was apprenticed to a local engraver.
This occupation brought him to Boston, where Rowse learned lithography, probably in the shop of Tappan and Bradford (Peters, post). In the work of his early years in Boston there have been identified a portrait of Richard Fletcher, justice of the supreme court of Massachusetts, and several minor pieces delineated for Tappan and Bradford. Among his illustrations were those for Louise Chandler Moulton's This, That, and the Other (edition of 1856).
A reticent, reserved man, who never married, Rowse had a brief stage experience, appearing in King Richard III at Boston. Convinced that his talent did not lie in that direction, he resumed the making of delicate, well-characterized crayon drawings through which he gained a national and international reputation. Among his familiar portraits are those of James Russell Lowell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. His studio for many years was in the old Studio Building, Tremont Street, where his closest friend and professional associate was Eastman Johnson.
In 1872 Rowse visited England, where he became acquainted with John Ruskin, of whom he later said, "He wanted me to hold the brush while he painted" (Peters, post). Having moved to New York in 1880, Rowse made his home at Morristown, N. J. , where he died after amassing a considerable estate.
