Guy O Rose (1867–1925)

Guy Orlando Rose  was an American Impressionist painter and California resident who received national recognition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1884 and moved to San Francisco where he studied art between 1885 and 1888 at the School of Design with Virgil Williams, Warren E. Rollins, and the Danish-born artist Emil Carlsen.

In 1886, he received honorable mentions in both drawing and oil painting; a year later he was given the school’s coveted Avery Gold Medal in oil painting and contributed a still life with “excellent tone” to the Winter Annual of the San Francisco Art Association. On September 12, 1888, Rose enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris and studied with Benjamin-Constant, Jules Lefebvre, Lucien Doucet and Jean-Paul Laurens while in Paris.

In 1888-89, he won a scholarship at the Académie Delacluse and contributed religious and figural studies as well as landscapes to the Paris Salons in 1890, 1891, 1894, 1900, and 1909. He met fellow students Frank Vincent and Frederick Melville at the Académie Julian – Frank Vincent and Guy Rose were to remain lifelong friends. Rose lived in New York, New York in the 1890s and illustrated for Harper’s, Scribners, and Century.

Choosing to return to France in 1899, he and his wife Ethel Rose bought a cottage at Giverny. In 1900 he resided in Paris and spent the winter in Briska, Algeria where he painted three known paintings. From 1904 to 1912 husband and wife lived in Giverny and his works from this period show the influence of “the master” Claude Monet, who became his friend and mentor.