Guy Rose · 1867–1925

Guy Rose: a biography

One of the few native-born Californians among the leading plein-air painters, Guy Rose trained in Paris, painted for years at Giverny, and came home to become one of the defining figures of California Impressionism.

San Gabriel

Guy Orlando Rose was born on March 3, 1867, in San Gabriel, California, the seventh child of Leonard John Rose, a prominent rancher, vineyard owner and California state senator, and Amanda Jones Rose. The family ranch gave its name to the town of Rosemead. In 1876, on a hunting trip with his brothers, he was accidentally shot in the face. While he recovered he began to sketch, and then to paint in watercolor and oil.

He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1884 and moved to San Francisco, where he studied from 1885 to 1888 at the California School of Design under Virgil Williams, Warren E. Rollins and Emil Carlsen. He won the school's Avery Gold Medal in oil painting in 1887.

Paris

On September 12, 1888, he enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, studying with Jean-Paul Laurens, Benjamin-Constant, Jules Lefebvre and Lucien Doucet. He contributed figure studies and landscapes to the Paris Salons of 1890, 1891, 1894, 1900 and 1909.

New York and Giverny

In the 1890s he lived in New York and illustrated for Harper's, Scribner's and Century. In 1899 he and his wife Ethel returned to France and bought a cottage at Giverny, where he painted landscapes and figures among the American artists drawn to the village where Claude Monet lived and worked. He spent the winter of 1900 in Algeria. From 1913 to 1914 the Roses summered at Narragansett, Rhode Island, where he ran an outdoor sketching school.

California

Lead poisoning from his paints troubled him for much of his life, and in 1914 he and Ethel moved permanently to Los Angeles. The California years were short but productive. He painted the coast at Carmel, Laguna Beach and La Jolla, and the hills of the San Gabriel Valley. Between 1918 and 1920 the Roses were summer residents of Carmel-by-the-Sea and exhibiting members of that colony, showing at the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club in 1919 and 1920. In Los Angeles he taught and served as director of the Stickney Memorial Art School in Pasadena.

Last years

In 1921 he suffered a debilitating stroke that left him paralyzed, and he died in Pasadena on November 17, 1925. The following year the Stendahl Gallery in Los Angeles held a memorial exhibition of his work. The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento holds the largest public collection of his paintings.

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Sources

Written for guyrosefineart.com, with facts checked against the sources listed below.

1. Wikipedia, "Guy Rose." en.wikipedia.org (accessed October 2026).
2. Will South, Guy Rose: American Impressionist, 1995.