The son of the prominent artist John Gadsby Chapman, Conrad Wise Chapman became a widely-recognized landscape and genre painter in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Rome, Chapman studied art with his father and produced a series of Italian landscapes between 1855 and 1861. He returned to the United States at the outset of the Civil War, enlisting in the Confederate Army and studying the imagery of war. After being wounded in the Battle of Shiloh, he produced a series of paintings of Southern forts and batteries, which contrasted the beauty of the natural settings with the horrors of destruction. He gained recognition for this series as well as his paintings of Mexico, which made him one of the first American artists to capture the lure of the Mexican landscape. Chapman's work can now be seen in museums throughout the United States, including the Amon Carter Museum in Texas, the Gibbes Museum of Art in South Carolina, and the Timkin Museum of Art in San Diego, California.

Biography courtesy of Questroyal Fine Art LLC, www.antiquesandfineart.com/questroyal