American genre painter; born in New York city June 6, 1841. He was taken to Cincinnati when a child and began to study art at the age of ten. In 1863 he went to Düsseldorf, where he studied drawing under Professor Mucke and painting under Kindler. He next spent six months with Hebert in Paris. In 1866 he returned to Cincinnati, where he devoted his time to portraits and small genre pictures. In 1874 he went to Europe again and spent the following twenty years in Munich and Paris. During this period he executed many large canvasses and received numerous awards, the first, in 1874, being a medal from the Royal Academy at Munich. In 1879 he exhibited "The Return of the Prodigal Son" at the Paris Salon; this picture was awarded an "honorable mention" and was afterward purchased by the French government for the Luxemburg gallery, being the first work so purchased from an American artist.
Mosler received also the gold medal of the Paris Salon, 1888, the silver medal of the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889, the Archduke Carl Ludwig of Austria's gold medal, 1893, the Thomas B. Clarke prize, National Academy of Design, New York, 1896, etc. He was made chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur and officier de l'Académie in 1892, and associate of the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1895.
Some of Mosler's paintings are in the museums of Sydney, N. S. W., and Grenoble, France, and in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) and Cincinnati, Ohio. Some are in private collections, as "The Wedding Feast," purchased by Jacob H. Schiff of New York (1898), and "Invoking God's Blessing," bought by Henry Seligman (1900).