Harry Herman Roseland

American (1866-1950)

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1866, Roseland studied with portrait artist John Whittaker at the Adelphia Art Academy, as well as with Thomas Eakins and Charles Beckwith in New York City. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Roseland lived his entire career in New York and never traveled to Europe. He became well known for his renditions of common laborers in fields, black fortune tellers reading white women’s palms and tea leaves, and post-Civil War African Americans engaged in common everyday activities. Roseland also specialized in interior genre paintings showcasing the artist’s flair for telling a story within his works. Like many works of the time, Roseland’s paintings were popular enough to be etched and distributed in print form to a broader audience; some, such as Reading Her Fortune, were even published in Harper’s Weekly.

Roseland was a member of the Brooklyn Art Club, the Salmagundi Club, the Brooklyn Society of Artists and the Brooklyn Painters Society. He exhibited at the National Academy from 1884 to 1900, at the Brooklyn Art Association, the Brooklyn Art Club, the Boston Art Club, the Corcoran Gallery, the Society of Independent Artists, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Salmagundi Club and the Salon of Americas. His works are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, the Charleston Art Museum, and the Heckscher Museum, Long Island, New York.