David was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts. His people were artists and teachers. His grandmother, Eleanor Fisher, supported her family with paintings that were to become prints for the Prang Print Co. in Boston. Her brother was Abbot Thayer. David’s mother’s cousin was married to Rockwell Kent and his father’s sister , Helen Grose, was a well known illustrator in her day.

He was educated at the Fenn School in Concord, Ma., at the Cambridge School of Weston, then at the University of Wisconsin for two years. He spent three years in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Sonar (Harbor Defense) in Beni Saf, Algeria; Bailey’s Island, Maine, and San Diego.

He was a graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY; and studied at the Art Student’s League in NYC under Harry Sternberg and Will Barnett.

David Grose is known nationally for his book illustrations. He has illustrated three of John Hay’s books with wood engravings and pen drawings, namely “The Run”, “Nature’s Year” and “The Great Beach”.

He worked at the Kathryn Berrien Studio in Greenwich Village, NYC which moved to Dennis, Massachusetts in 1954 and he with it. He soon took charge of the silkscreen department making prints for a NY publisher. The screening technique in those days was cut film sensitized by chemicals then adhered to the silkscreen. Colors were generally added by Pochoir, stenciling with watercolor paint.

Later cut film was replaced with a more versatile and fluid method of painting with opaque ink on acetate-one for each color printed. It involved a personal analysis of the colors for a print and the positives on acetate were all done by hand. He never abandoned this method, though many others chose to let machines take over the mind, hand eye process.

David’s artistic imagination and need to meet new expectations and challenges brought on innovations. He often used twenty colors in his prints and has been known to use over forty. He would often create subtle shading by distribution of colors on the screen which would blend with the pass of the squeegee.

The last twenty -five years of his career were devoted almost exclusively to making limited edition prints based on his own paintings; the subject being the place he loved, where he spent most of his adult life- Cape Cod.

The Grose Gallery at 524 Route 6A, Dennis, Ma. where he lived and worked was a fixture in the town for over forty years. David Grose, born in 1922 died in 2016.