Samuel Rose was born on September 17, 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to painting he served for 6 years in the U.S. Army at Fort Sill, OK and Fort Knox, KT. He studied drawing and oil painting for seventeen years with the renowned teacher-painter-historian R.H.Ives Gammell at the Fenway Studio in Boston and in Williamstown, MA. Rose is considered one of the finest living painters of the Boston school of painting tradition because he is a consummate draftsman whose brushwork is so intricate that one cannot tell where one line begins and another ends. The artist also studied in Cleveland with Basil E. Kalashnifoff and with Henry Hensche and Robert Douglas Hunter in Provincetown, and at Kent State University. He is a scholar-student of Renaissance painters and of Maxfield Parrish (whose style highly influenced his) and of Gérôme and Bonnat and Tarbell.

Rose was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Dorothy and Charles Rose (a carpenter and bricklayer). From 1971-1973 Rose lived and painted in Guernavaca and Xoechitapec and Aculpuco, Mexico, where he painted kings, princes, murals and the local people in surrealistic views and realistic portraiture. In 1974 he returned to Boston and Pierce Galleries, Inc. became his exclusive art agent.

Rose’s first award was in 1956 from the Halle Brothers Company in Cleveland for superior draftsmanship in a portrait. He has won medals at the Cooper School of Art (and a scholarship), 7 grants from the E.T. Greenshields Memorial Foundation (Montreal, Canada); first prizes at the Concord Art Association, the Copley Society, the Guild of Boston Artists; the Julius Hallgarten Prize at the National Academy of Design (New York City); first prize at the National Arts Club, New York; and awards at the Concord Art Association and the Salmagundi Club (NY). He has been given one-man shows at the Concord Art Association and Pierce Galleries, Inc.

Rose is world-famous for his realistic, oftentimes witty and surrealistic subjects, superb portraits and figure pieces painted in multi-layers of oscillating colors that blend and soften into juxtaposing areas. During the 1960s he painted many surreal subjects, using skeletons, toys and dolls animated in “human-like positions and attitudes.” The artist excels at surrealistic subjects because it affords him the opportunity to mix humor, satire and reality into an often shocking, startling or comical whole and this venue allows the artist to delve into the subconscious or extraordinary.

During the 1970s Sam Rose began painting superior quality still life and genre subjects from life and he only painted 2 landscapes along with 2 views of the Boston Commons and Public Gardens. During the 1970s and 1980s he painted many portraits of famous men and women including Mrs. F. Lee Bailey and the Maharaja. Each of his paintings has a smooth surface (oftentimes glass-like) upon which few hard edges are seen. He is considered by leading Boston school authorities to be an American master.

The artist resided in Macedonia, Ohio from 1985 until his death  on February 18, 2008.