[4] In 1852, Rowse worked for a lithographer and then opened a studio in Boston, Massachusetts, due to the demand for his crayon (pastel) and charcoal portraits.
[6] In June 1858,[1] Rowse made a sketch of Emerson, considered by William James Stillman to be "the most masterly" depiction of him.
Henry Box Brown was a slave who escaped from Richmond, Virginia in 1849 by having himself shipped overland express to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in a small crate, delivered to Passmore Williamson, Reverend James Miller McKim, and other members of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.
Rowse is depicted in his friend, Eastman Johnson's painting of two men, The Funding Bill, which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection.
[4] He was commissioned to make portraits of James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.