Daniel Charles Grose

Daniel Charles Grose (1832 – 1900) was a prolific Canadian-American painter of the Hudson River School who was active between 1865 and 1900.

DC Grose: Quebec Rapids - 1865

An Irish painter by the name of Daniel Charles Grose who died in 1838 may have been the grandfather of the Canadian painter.The evidence is all circumstantial, however.

Daniel Charles Grose was born in 1832 in Whitby, England.He was one of a half-dozen children born to Daniel Henderson and Sarah Rachel Grose.

The Grose family were actors and performers who travelled throughout the north of England for most of the 1830s and 1840s.Truly a family affair, a London paper in 1843 described a theatre under the management of Mr [Daniel Henderson] Grose as appearing to "have a gross of little Groses, who constitute his company."

After serving in the Merchant Navy in the early 1850s, Daniel Charles Grose married his first wife, Louisa Askew, on June 8, 1856 at Chatham, Kent, England.

He was living with his in laws in England in 1861 but by 1865 he and his wife had moved to Toronto, Ontario where he seems to have described himself for the first time as an artist.By 1868, Grose and Louisa had moved to Brooklyn , New York, where he lived extensively throughout the rest of his life.It is unclear what happened to Louisa, who was in the 1870 New York Census, but while visiting his family in Canada in 1875, Grose married his second wife Molly or Mary Jane White. This second marriage was not a happy one and after a couple of years they separated.Mary returned to her family in New Brunswick, but soon went back to New York where she died in 1881 of "exhaustion due to acute mania."It is possible that Grose was trying to not be found as he had moved to Washington DC where, in the 1880 census, he was calling himself Charles Daniel Grose.

Grose’s work indicates an affinity to the second generation of the Hudson River School (ca 1848–1900).The Samuel Dorksy Museum of Art, lists two of his works as examples of the Hudson school.Most of Grose’s exeunt work depicts pastoral landscapes, or romantic scenes with ruins. The earliest known Grose works are dated 1865 and consist of a series of landscapes in the province of Quebec.

On May 25, 1881, in Washington, D.C., Grose married Harriet Estella Smith (1863–1914), also an artist. She was the daughter of Captain Dwight Hayden Smith and his wife Luana Elizabeth Smith of Alexandria, Virginia. Between 1881 and 1884 Grose and Harriet took a trip around the world.They moved back to Brooklyn but continued travelling nearly until his death, leaving New York again in 1895 and not returning from Australia until 1898.

Grose was a member of and exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association.

Grose died in Alexandria at his mother-in-law's house (Mrs. H Dwight Smith) on February 24, 1900.His funeral was held the next day in Washington at his former residence.

His wife Harriet died in Brooklyn, New York on October 6, 1914.

Dated

1864

• River Landscape - oil on canvas 9"x12" - signed - dated

1865:Grose's first dated paintings show scenes in the Canadian province of Quebec

• Afternoon by the Falls – oil on canvas – signed – dated
• River Landscape 1 – oil on canvas – signed – dated
• River Landscape 2 – oil on canvas – signed – dated
• Lac de Deux Montages – oil on canvas – signed – dated – (Montreal)
• Quebec Rapids – oil on canvas – signed – dated
• Duck Shooting from a Boat – oil on canvas – signed – dated – (Montreal)

1867:

• Mill Dam - oil on canvas – signed – dated – (Philadelphia)

1870:

• Moghul Palace in a Landscape - oil on canvas – signed – dated

1874:

• Autumnal Sunset Over a Mill - oil on canvas – signed – dated

1875:

• Trading on the Plains - oil on canvas – signed

1876:

• Landscape with Fields and Distant Hills - oil on canvas – signed – dated

1877:

• Mt. Katahdin – oil on canvas – signed - dated

1887:

• Autumn, Hudson River Valley - oil on canvas – signed – dated
• The Old City of Delhi - oil on canvas – signed – dated
• Winter Sleigh Ride - oil on canvas – signed – dated

1895:

• River Landscape with Village - oil on canvas – signed – dated

Undated

• Lake Scene with Waterfall & Distant Mountains
• Fisherman in a Landscape
• River Scene
• Lakeside Landscape
• Waterfall in the West
• A Romantic View of Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite Valley California
• Waterfall
• River Landscape with Village
• River Landscape
• A View In The White Mountains
• A View In Maryland
• Skating Scene
• Spring on the Wissahickon
• Autumn on the Wissahickon