Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rosenberg, George Frederic
ROSENBERG, GEORGE FREDERIC (1825–1869), painter, the youngest son of Thomas Elliot Rosenberg, a miniature and landscape painter, was born at Bath on 9 March 1825. Owing to the early death of his father, he was almost entirely self-taught. A lover and close observer of nature, he attained such proficiency as a flower-painter that he was elected an associate of the ‘Old Water-Colour’ Society on 14 June 1847, at an unusually early age. He never became a full member. He continued for some years to paint only flowers, fruit, and still life. He published ‘The Guide to Flower Painting in Water-Colours,’ with illustrations, in 1853, and was largely employed in tuition at Bath. In 1855 he exhibited studies of buildings in Wales and Shropshire, in 1856 a scene in Glencoe, between 1857 and 1860 views in Switzerland and the Scottish highlands, in 1861 mountain scenery in Norway. He made several visits to that country, during the last of which, in 1869, he caught a chill by sitting down when overheated to sketch a glacier. He died soon after his return to Bath, on 17 Sept. 1869. The drawings, about three hundred in number, which remained on his hands at his death were sold at Christie's on 12 and 14 Feb. 1870. He had married, in July 1856, Hannah Fuller Jenner, by whom he had two daughters and a posthumous son. The elder daughter, Ethel Jenner Rosenberg, is a well-known miniature and landscape painter.
Two of Rosenberg's sisters were also self-taught but accomplished artists. Frances Elizabeth Louisa was elected, when very young, a member of the New Water-Colour Society; she married John D. Harris, jeweller, of 5 Queen Square, Bath, and died on 9 Aug. 1872. Mary Elizabeth, who married William Duffield [q. v.], painter, became a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours.
[Roget's Hist. of the ‘Old Water-Colour’ Society, ii. 301; Bath Chronicle, 23 Sept. 1869 and 15 Aug. 1872; Athenæum, 25 Sept. 1869; private information.]