Henry Mosler Biography | Oil Paintings

Henry Mosler moved with his family to New York in 1849 from Poland, when he was 8 years old. In 1851, the family relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio, the site of a substantial German-Jewish community.

In his early teens, he was taught the painting basics by an amateur landscape painter, the rest of his training was self-taught, until later on. As with most Jews in the North, Henry Mosler was a strong Union supporter, and Harper's Weekly served as an important voice for the Union forces. He was an aide-de-camp with the army of Ohio from 1861-1863 and published 34 drawings in Harper's Weekly 18 of them depicting the Kentucky and Ohio Campaign in 1862.

In 1863 Mosler left the army and sailed to Düsseldorf, to study at the Royal Academy for three years, under Heinrich Mücke and Albert Kindler, after which he went to Paris for six months to study with Ernest Hébert.

He returned to Cincinnati in 1866, where he received numerous portrait commissions. Henry Mosler also created the first painting for which he received a significant degree of recognition, The Lost Cause, of a dejected Confederate soldier, which he exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1868.

In 1874, Mosler returned to France for a short stay before going to the Royal Academy in Munich to study with Carl Theodor von Piloty for three years. In 1877, he moved to France and while living in Brittany, he painted The Quadroon Girl and Early Cares, both of which were accepted by the Paris Salon of 1879 and his oil painting Le Retour, also exhibited that year, was the first American painting ever bought for the Luxembourg Palace. He received a gold medal in Paris in 1888, a silver medal at the Salons in Paris in 1889, and Vienna in 1893.

In 1894 he moved his family to New York, opening a studio in Carnegie Hall. Henry Mosler served as an associate in the National Academy of Design and continued painting well into the Twentieth century.

His son, Gustave Henry Mosler also became an artist. His granddaughter, Audrey Skirball-Kenis was the founder of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Art Movement: Realism.
Artists Influencing Henry Mosler: James Henry Beard, Heinrich Mücke, Ernest Hébert.
He Traveled To USA, Germany, France, Austria.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.