Charles W. Knapp American (1823-1900)

Signed (l.l.): C W Knapp

Oil on canvas

29″ x 45″ framed

Provenance: Richard York Gallery, New York; private collection, California

Charles W. Knapp was born in Philadelphia. He worked in Cleveland from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s, with a stint in New York City around 1860, before settling permanently in Philadelphia. Although little is known of his personal life, Knapp left behind a substantial painted legacy, and the locations of his landscapes can tell us something of his travels. His often painted New Hampshire, including Mount Washington, Mount Chocorua, and Mount Kearsage, Franconia Notch, and the Saco and Androscoggin Rivers, and he also painted scenes in the Green Mountains, Adirondacks, Berkshires, Catskills, and along the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers.

Knapp exhibited his work widely, including at the National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Union League Club of Philadelphia, Young Men’s Association, Troy, New York; Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Cosmopolitan Art Association, Sandusky, Ohio; Cincinnati Associated Artists, Detroit Art Association, Cleveland Sanitary Fair, 1864; Chicago Interstate Industrial Exposition, 1874; Louisville Industrial Exposition, 1875; and the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1878. His works can be found in the collections of the Albany Institute of History and Art, New York; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia; Robert Hull Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, Burlington; New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord; Sewell C. Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover, Delaware; and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.