The landscape painter Charles Wilson Knapp was born in Philadelphia. He lived in New York City from 1859 to 1861, and exhibited in those years at the National Academy of Design. He exhibited sporadically at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts between 1877 and 1887. Although Knapp is best remembered today for his representations of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, he also painted along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, the Catskill Mountains in New York, and the New Jersey shore. He died in Philadelphia.