Carl Newman was born in 1858 in Germany. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1876 and 1879. He married an American, Helene Zaun of Philadelphia, in 1883, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States. From 1892 to 1895, Carl Newman taught at the Academy.
From 1887 until 1911, Newman regularly showed in the Annual Exhibit at the P.A.F.A. in Philadelphia. In 1901, he exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum in their 8th Annual Exhibition. He has a modern painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and also at the New Jersey Gallery of Art in Trenton. A large collection of the paintings and sketches left in his wife’s estate was donated to the Smithsonian Gallery of American Art in 1968.
Carl Newman was fortunate to be independently wealthy which afforded him the ability to travel widely. He studied art in Germany, Philadelphia, and Paris. He kept homes in Philadelphia and Paris until World War I when he settled at the home/studio he had built in Beth Ayres, PA.
Carl Newman painted primarily in oils but also in pastels. He was a “figure specialist” who painted in many different styles but was finally known as a Fauvist.
At the time of his last recorded participation in an exhibit, “Exhibition of Paintings Showing the Later Tendencies in Art,” 1921, he was living in Beth Ayres, Pennsylvania where he stayed until his death in 1932. Carl and Helene had no children and are buried with Helene’s family in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.