Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Cleveland Rockwell received early training in art and engineering. He was a cartographer for the Union Army in the Civil War, after which he made a brief mapping tour of South America, then settled in Portland, Oregon. He became chief of the NW section of the U.S. Geodetic Survey and conducted surveys in California, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska. He surveyed the 50 miles of Oregon coast south of Astoria and the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.
Although Rockwell did not become a full-time painter until his retirement in 1892, the many sketches he made on his expeditions served as the basis for his later oil and watercolor paintings. Rockwell was a founding member of the Portland Art Club.

In 2001, through the research of Scott Ferris of Franklin Springs, NY, a Rockwell Kent scholar, we learned that Cleveland Rockwell was a brother of Rockwell Kent’s grandmother and is therefore Kent’s great uncle. Braarud Fine Art is interested in both oil paintings and watercolors in fine, unfaded condition by Cleveland Rockwell.