Creator Bio

Henry Mosler

1841–1920

The German-born, American-raised painter and printmaker Henry Mosler worked as an artist and correspondent for Harper’s Weekly during the Civil War. In his home city of Cincinnati, he painted the Plum Street Temple (ca. 1866), representing the synagogue of the leading Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, as well as portraits of members of the local Jewish community. Mosler subsequently settled in Paris, where he showed his works in the Salon, the annual art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, from 1878 to 1897. His 1879 entry, Return of the Prodigal Son, was awarded an honorable mention and acquired for the Musée du Luxembourg, making it the first painting by an American artist that the French government purchased.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

Primary Source

Canal Street Market

Restricted
Image
The Canal Street Market, built in 1829, was the largest and most popular market in Cincinnati, where artist Henry Mosler’s family settled after immigrating from Germany, when he was eight years old…

Primary Source

Return of the Prodigal Son

Restricted
Image
The Christian parable of the prodigal son, from Luke 15:11–12, was a favorite subject of artists from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. A son squanders his inheritance and is reduced to…

Primary Source

Drawings Published in Harper’s

Public Access
Image
An illustration for the monthly magazine Harper’s, The Thirty-Second Indiana Regiment (Colonel Willich) Building Pontoons in Kentucky was likely drawn by Henry Mosler during the Civil War. Engravings…
Painting of women seated at rows of desks sewing.
Tooltip info icon

Related Guide

Painters, Sculptors, and Photographers, 1750–1880

All over the world, Jewish art reflected the hybrid nature of Jewishness, including the material circumstances and cultural milieu of the larger environment. Individual artisans and artists selected and created according to their personal and Jewish experiences.