by Roy C. Rose and The Irvine Museum

              “Catalogue Raisonné” is a French term signifying a book that lists and/or illustrates all known works by a particular artist.  The Irvine Museum is seeking any and all works by Guy Rose for inclusion in the Guy Rose Catalogue Raisonné.  Please direct all information on any works by Guy Rose to be recorded in the catalogue to: 

Roy C. Rose
Guy Rose Catalogue Raisonné Project
P.O. Box 2529
Avalon, CA 90704

or

(Mr.) Jean Stern, Executive Director
The Irvine Museum
18881 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 100 (Ground Level)
Irvine, CA 92612

            The Guy Rose Catalogue Raisonné will be published as a supplemental volume to Guy Rose: American Impressionist, by Will South (Oakland Museum and Irvine Museum, 1995).

Biograpy of Guy Rose

            Born on March 3, 1867, in San Gabriel, California, Guy Rose attended the California School of Design in San Francisco, in 1886 and 1887, studying under Virgil Williams and Emil Carlsen (1853-1932).  In 1888 he went to Paris and enrolled in the Académie Julian.  He was an exceptional student who won every award the school offered and soon found his paintings accepted for the annual Paris Salon exhibitions. 

            In 1894 Rose experienced a bout of lead poisoning which forced him to abandon oil painting.  He returned to the United States in the winter of 1895 and began a career as an illustrator.  He also taught drawing and portraiture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.  He gradually regained his health and returned to oil painting around 1897. 

            In 1899 he returned to Paris, where he continued to do illustration work for Harper's Bazaar and other American magazines.  Rose was greatly influenced by Claude Monet, and in 1904 he and his wife Ethel, also an artist, settled in Giverny, becoming members of the small American art colony there.  He was a close friend of artists Richard Miller (1875-1943), Lawton Parker (1868-1939), Alson S. Clark (1876-1949) and Frederick Frieseke (1874-1939).   In 1910, Frieseke, Miller, Parker, Clark and Rose exhibited in New York as "The Giverny Group." 

            Rose returned permanently to the United States in 1912, settling for a time in New York.  He moved to Pasadena at the end of 1914 and became active in local art circles, serving for several years on the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art.  He became the director of the Stickney Memorial School of Fine Arts in Pasadena and persuaded Richard Miller to teach at the school in 1916. 

            Rose painted primarily in the southern part of the state until about 1917, at which time he began to spend summers in Carmel and Monterey.  He developed a serial style of painting like that of Monet, in which the same scene would be depicted at different times of day.  Arthur Millier, the art critic for the Los Angeles Times expressed great admiration when he remarked that Rose was “almost more a French Impressionist than an American painter.” 

            Rose was a member of the California Art Club and the Laguna Beach Art Association.  Three one-man exhibitions were held for him at the Los Angeles Museum in 1916, 1918, and 1919.  He was represented in Los Angeles by Stendahl Galleries and in New York by William Macbeth.  Among his numerous awards were a Bronze Medal, Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901; a Silver Medal, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915; and the William Preston Harrison Prize, California Art Club, 1921.  He was disabled by a stroke in 1921, four years before his death on November 17, 1925, in Pasadena, California.