CHARLES ROSNER

Marine painter in watercolor and oils, Charles Rosner was born into a doctor’s family in Langendorf, Germany in 1894. Rosner’s childhood included family trips to Kolberg, a thousand-year-old port on the Baltic Sea and a fashionable resort. During these holidays he developed a fascination for the sea and sea-going vessels. The young Rosner spent from 1910 to 1913 as a sailor, serving aboard clipper ships that plied trade routes around the world, and making five hazardous passages around Cape Horn before leaving the sailor’s life in Iquique, Peru at the onset of the First World War. Rosner spent the duration of the war working in the copper mines in Peru. He later spent several years traveling and living in Argentina, Chile, and Europe. Rosner eventually emigrated to Canada and then to America, where he married and settled in New York State. As a landsman, he took up painting ships and other marine subjects full-time. Most of his work was done from photographs, and many of his paintings were reproduced as chromolithographs. Examples of Rosner’s work can be seen at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut and the Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, Virginia. Rosner died in Bellport, New York in 1975.