"Three Tugs,” circa early 1930s, reflects Rosen's interest in using geometric forms to depict tough working boats on the Hudson River. It measures a characteristic 32 by 40 inches. Collection of Jim's of Lambertville, Lambertville, N.J.
:A gifted, underappreciated artist, Charles Rosen (1878–1950) excelled at robust Impressionist views of the Pennsylvania countryside while living in New Hope, and at Cubist/realist views of manmade structures after he moved to Woodstock, N.Y. The wonder is that he was so accomplished and so successful in both phases of his career. Rosen was a star of the Pennsylvania Impressionists and then an important figure in the modernist movement in America.
Rosen's fascinatingly bifurcated oeuvre and the restless intelligence that led him to shift styles and residences in midcareer is the subject of the exhibition "Form Radiating Life: The Paintings of Charles Rosen." Organized by the James A. Michener Art Museum and its senior curator, Brian H. Peterson, the exhibition is on view at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz, through May 20.
Born in Reagantown, Penn., in the coal-mining region near Pittsburgh, Rosen showed early drawing ability. After a short stint running a photography studio, at age 20 he went to New York City, where he studied at the National Academy of Design and at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase and Frank Vincent DuMond. He worked as a commercial artist and ushered at a theater to make ends meet.
The dazzling white of deep-packed snow animates Charles Rosen's "A Winter Morning,” circa 1913, while the influence of Japanese design is seen in the scraggly dark trees in the foreground and the woods across the water. Collection of Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest.
At the New York School of Art, he met fellow student Mildred Holden, whose father taught at West Point. After marrying in 1913, they spent their honeymoon in rural New Hope, which they liked so much that they settled there, eventually in a house along the towpath.
By this time the town's art colony had begun to form around tonalist painter William L. Lathrop and Impressionist stalwart Edward W. Redfield, both well-known figures in the American art world. They were soon joined by such talented artists as John F. Folinsbee, Daniel Garber and Robert Spencer. The New Hope painters concentrated on landscapes — pastures and quarries, rivers and canals — with occasional mills and bridges, brickyards and tenements in sight.
When commercial art assignments dried up, Rosen began to paint landscapes, which eventually sold well. His earliest works, influenced by Lathrop, were in a delicate tonalist manner, characterized by muted colors and an effort to convey the feel of a place rather than what it actually looked like. Examples in the exhibition include "The Delaware Thawing," 1906, and "Across the River," 1909.
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