ABOUT MANUEL ROSENBERG
Lead on pencil; we've got to go more places!
-Manuel Rosenberg
After three years training at the Art Academy of Cincinnati under Duveneck and Meakin, Mr. Rosenberg studied in New York, Chicago and Paris. He has sketched celebrities throughout the world and many of these autographed drawings have been reproduced in magazines. Known for an enormous output of graphic work, Mr. Rosenberg is also the author of a number of books on advertising, among them the following: "Newspaper Art," "Practical Art," "Cartooning and Drawing" and "The Art of Advertising."
- The Cincinnati Enquirer - January 18, 1931
Sketching is an art in itself, and requires the cultivation of a photographic eye. Like any other art -playing a violin or piano, for example-training, plus at least a slight natural talent, is essential.
-Manuel Rosenberg Course in Newspaper Art, 1922
Manuel Rosenberg, "Rosie" as friends and colleagues called him, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 29, 1897. His father, Benjamin Rosenberg, was a cap-maker from Minsk, and his mother, Celia Jasin Rosenberg, was born in Kyiv. Manuel was an infant when the yellow fever pandemic broke out in New Orleans, and the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Settling in the Over-The-Rhine immigrant neighborhood, the Rosenbergs had two more children, Simon (Anita Rosenberg's grandfather) and Jessie Rosenberg Tyroler. The family bought the building at 1515 Central Avenue, where they ran a dry goods store called Rosenbergs on the ground floor. They lived upstairs. Manuel attended Hopple School, where he was forced to sit in the girls' corner because he drew caricatures.
Manuel's first professional assignment was a cartoon for the London Herald Examiner's front page when he was fifteen years old. In 1914, he went to New York City and completed his studies at the Art Students League, Cooper Union, and the National Academy of Design. He also attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and studied in Paris. Before World War I, Manuel was on the art staff of Cartoons Magazine, New York Press, Toledo News-Bee, the Chicago Day Book, and the Charlestown (W. Virginia) Post. In 1918, first-class petty officer Rosenberg was the official cartoonist of the United States naval aviation unit of the Great Lakes.
Rosenberg is one of the best known artists that ever wore the Navy Blue, and leaves behind a multitude of drawings and illustrations of Navy life behind him.
-Great Lakes Bulletin, April 24, 1919
From 1917 to 1930, Manuel Rosenberg was the chief artist of the Cincinnati Post, Scripps-Howard chain of syndicated newspapers. He carried his drawing board to every corner of the world to cover major news stories. Rosenberg interviewed and sketched almost every famous personality of his time, including statesmen, soldiers, chorus girls, and even criminals. He knew and sketched every president from Theodore Roosevelt to Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, he had audiences with most of the kings, popes, and dictators of Europe. He was among the first American newsmen to travel in and report from Russia in 1929.
As an artist, writer, and adventurer, Manuel Rosenberg was a pioneer and trailblazer who understood the power of making a media splash. He tantalized his readers with accounts of intrigue, exploration, and celebrity. He left a lasting legacy through his four books, the tens of thousands of articles he illustrated and wrote, and the publishing empire he built with Markets of America and The Advertiser. Wherever Manuel went, his celebrity status and letters of introduction flung open the doors of palaces, secret passageways of monasteries, backstage access at theaters, and even the inner sanctum of the Vatican. The exploits of European travels and his collection of over 20,000 personally autographed celebrity drawings were the largest collection ever.
Uncle Manuel was a household name in the United States in the 1920s.
He created a fascinating, lucrative, and influential career as an artist.
In 1945, Manuel met and married Parisian photographer Lydie Bloch in San Francisco. Lydie had fled the Hitler invasion of France in 1940 and started as a clerk for Manuel's publication, The Advertiser. She learned the business and worked her way up to become editor, eventually becoming Manuel's business and life partner. The publication outgrew the Cincinnati offices and expanded to 11 W. 42nd St. in New York City. The couple relocated to Fifth Avenue, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They traveled extensively throughout the United States and abroad in search of stories for their magazine. Manuel and Lydie became an integral part of Manhattan's art and cultural society until Manuel's passing on April 28, 1967, after a long illness with cancer. Lydie remarried their longtime friend, James Strobridge, heir to the Strobridge Lithography Company. Lydie and James organized and donated Manuel's 300 original drawings to the Columbia University Rare and Manuscript Library, so that future generations could discover his work.
Kings and Shine Boys Peek Over
Famed Artist’s Shoulders
As Draws World’s Great Faces
by Paul Crume
World celebrities have peeked over Manuel Rosenberg’s shoulder.
A strapping big man with frizzly hair and a tentative kind of chuckle, Rosenberg turned up at the motor transport convention in Dallas, pencil and sketchbook in hand. He was forced to sit in the girl’s corner at school when he was a lad because he drew caricatures. He sketches in Europe and America for ten years as a newspaper cartoonist. Now he edits and publishes the Advertiser in Cincinnati. But his flying fingers still won’t let a pencil lie unused.
Peeking over an artist’s shoulder is an amusement for both Kings and shine boys, he said, during a visit at The News Building. King Albert of Belgium, a puttering old fellow “as common as an old shoe” had ambled up behind Mr. Rosenberg in 1922 to peek at a pencil portrait of the ruler. “Ah, a cartoon-oonist,” the King said in a pleased growl and scrawled “Albert” across the bottom of the picture.
A policeman had peeked over Mr. Rosenberg’s shoulder in Moscow in 1929. Rosenberg was sketching the Red Square and the Kremlin. The policeman arrested the artist as a spy. A Secret Service man took the drawing, scowled and turned it over in search for concealed writing. Rosenberg remembered the Russian term for artist, used it. The Secret Service man smiled and said the drawing was good. He shooed the artist out in the street.
Everywhere he went, there people were peeking. He covered murders, Lindbergh, Queen Marie and almost every industrial magnate in America. Their pictures are among the 20,000 autographed sketches he collected. In 1929 he started his magazine. The artist will fly to Wichita Sunday and drift back to New Orleans next week.
While he talked, his flying fingers struck out more sketches in swift, sure motions. Three people were peeking over his shoulder.
-July 10 1938 – Dallas Morning News
Manuel
family photos, published images, caricatures, and newsclippings
Every family has one.
The archivist.
Every family has one. The archivist. The historian. The person obsessed with the family tree who spends way too many late-night hours heading down the rabbit hole, piecing together the what, where, and why of everybody’s business. In the Rosenberg family, that person is me...
