Jane Rosenberg

Jane Rosenberg is an American courtroom artist known for her pastel sketches of high-profile defendants, including Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Sean Combs, Tom Brady and Bill Cosby.

Biography

Rosenberg studied fine art at the Art Students League of New York, where abstract art was more popular than her preferred realism. She describes herself as having been a "closet portrait artist", drawing portraits in her kitchen. After graduating, she worked as a portrait artist in Provincetown, Massachusetts, sketching tourists for a dollar and busking by reproducing famous paintings in sidewalk chalk. When Rosenberg attended a lecture by courtroom artist Marilyn Church at the Society of Illustrators, she was inspired to attempt courtroom sketches herself.

To prepare a portfolio, Rosenberg began to attend the evening sessions of the New York City Criminal Court, where she sketched prostitutes at their arraignments. When she asked a court officer where the artists sat, he invited her to join them in the jury box the following week during the arraignment of Craig Crimmins. CNN declined to buy the sketch, but Rosenberg successfully sold it to NBC, which aired the image on the evening news. The 1980 sale began Rosenberg's career as a courtroom artist. The nature of her job means that she has to draw quickly, and sometimes observe from a video monitor in an overflow room, which Rosenberg dislikes. Lynne Stewart Mark David Chapman Martha Stewart Michael Cohen Omar Abdel-Rahman R. Kelly Sam Bankman-Fried Steve Bannon Tom Brady Woody Allen

Rosenberg has described Don King and Donald Trump as fun to draw. By contrast, she was traumatized by sketching the 1983 execution of John Louis Evans, and came to oppose the death penalty as a result.