By Bryan Marquard

American impressionist Harold Rotenberg spent many summers in Rockport.

With a hand he believed was guided by God, Harold Rotenberg painted canvases that gave new life to the spectrum of colors he admired in landscapes around the world.

From the rocky coast of Quebec to a hillside village in Israel to a cove in Rockport, where he spent many summers, Mr. Rotenberg painted scenes that formed a visual diary of international journeys that continued even after he turned 100. The subtlety of light, and its absence, spoke to him.

“Shadows,’’ he told the Globe in 1998, “are as important as the bass tones on a piano.’’

Mr. Rotenberg, an American impressionist whose work is part of the collections at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Israeli Parliament building, died in his sleep April 2 in his Winter Park, Fla., home. He was 105, and until recently his health was so good that his physician cleared him to travel once more to Israel.

“His art was really about a very particular brush stroke that is identifiable throughout his career,’’ said his granddaughter Abigail Ross Goodman of Cambridge. “He was tremendously interested in light and landscape and how you could capture the essence of a moment through its light and the play of that light on the landscape.’’

Generous with the paint he applied, Mr. Rotenberg created canvases that provided an aesthetic experience as tactile as it was visual.

“The texture,’’ he mused as he ran his fingertips over a painting in a video, recorded just before he turned 104, that is posted on www.growingbolder.com. “I’m interested in what it feels like.’’

Never one to linger in his studio, Mr. Rotenberg traveled the world looking for subjects. He considered his paintings adventures and thought that standing in front of a scene as he committed it to canvas was an integral part of creativity.

“For me, each painting has to be a new experience,’’ he told American Artist magazine. “I can’t cook up things in a studio. I work on the spot and like to feel the challenge of the subject. I need to be fired up and inspired.’’

He also needed to feel the presence of the divine.

“The most amazing thing about my father was that he had such great faith in God,’’ said his son, Jon of Brookline.

In the 1998 interview with the Globe, Mr. Rotenberg said simply: “God is so good. I thank him every day, every minute. He pours in atmosphere.’’

Born in Attleboro, Mr. Rotenberg was the youngest of eight children. His father was a tailor, an artist with cloth, Mr. Rotenberg told interviewers.

Mr. Rotenberg tried his hand at painting after seeing an older brother create sculptures from female figure models, an appealing art subject for an adolescent boy. At 19, not long after graduating from high school in Attleboro, he traveled to the Middle East and Europe for months with his parents and studied art in Jerusalem.

Over the next dozen years, he also trained in Boston, Paris, and Austria, and in the decades that followed he returned often to Paris and spent months at a time in Israel. He studied at the Museum School in Boston, at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grand Chaumière in Paris, and the Kunst academy in Austria.

He also taught in Boston at the Museum School and the School of Practical Arts, and in settlement houses that helped immigrants adjust to life in this country, such as Hecht House in Dorchester.

As much as possible, though, he supported his family by painting and indulging his wanderlust, traveling to Mexico and Morocco, Japan and Europe.

“He had this hunger to discover things different from him,’’ his granddaughter said. “He wanted to know different people, experience different cultures. He had an appetite to know the world, and I think that curiosity and that passion gave him the lease on life he had for so long.’’

Everywhere he went, Mr. Rotenberg sought creative sustenance outside in the elements, sunshine or storm.

“I went to nature because I was looking for the accidental, the unusual,’’ he told the Boston Herald in 1995. “I never sat in a studio. I went outdoors where there was rain or heat or sunlight pouring down on you.’’

The experience, he said, was always spiritual.

“I am working with God when I paint,’’ he told the Herald. “I talk to God with my paintbrush.’’

Mr. Rotenberg’s first marriage, to Fay Amgott, ended in divorce.

In 1969, he married Charlotte Ettinger, and in the growingbolder.com video he said of an early portrait he painted of her, “She looks like Elizabeth Taylor.’’

She became his companion on his travels, too, and got to see up close the joy he felt, brush in hand.

“When he paints, he smiles,’’ she said in the video.

“Relationships were so important to him,’’ his granddaughter said. “He cared so much about the people he came in contact with, and he maintained an aura of peacefulness that was very comforting.’’

His daughter Judi Rotenberg Ross Zuker of Newton, who used to sell her father’s paintings at a Newbury Street gallery she formerly owned, said his enthusiasm for a life that had stretched for so many years seemed to almost overshadow his artistic accomplishments at times.

“People are always so fascinated by his life and his personality and the presence of him,’’ she said. “Sometimes his great art took second place to his great personage. With a lesser man, they would have focused more on his fabulous artwork.’’

In addition to his wife, son, daughter, and granddaughter, Mr. Rotenberg leaves another daughter, Jane R. Moss of Boston; two stepdaughters, Audrey Lentz of Winter Park, Fla., and Janis Bear of New York City; four other grandchildren; four stepgrandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and three step-great-grandchildren.

A service has been held for Mr. Rotenberg, who was buried in Agudas Achim Cemetery in Attleboro.

“He never thought like an old man, he thought like a young person,’’ his son said. “Nine days before he died, I had dinner and a beer with him.’’

Mr. Rotenberg never took for granted the blessing of longevity.

“When I’m gone, I will miss all of this,’’ he said in the 1998 Globe interview with a sweep of his hand, as if to include everything he had ever encountered. The desire to keep creating was such that “sometimes I wake up at night and just paint pictures.’’

Asked in the growingbolder.com video what he wanted for his upcoming birthday, Mr. Rotenberg named only one gift: “Another day.

Esther F, Alsen (Ravech) Of Milton, on April 1, 2011. Beloved wife of the late Samuel H. Alsen. Devoted mother of Neil, Cheryl & Eileen Alsen & the late Lenny Alsen. Dear grandmother of Michael, Mark & Tania Cubell, Tammy LaPierre, Brian & Steven Gordon, Cherished great grandmother of Jacob & Katriel Cubell, Olivia & Brady LaPierre. Loving sister of the late Max, Abe & Oscar Ravech & Yetta Guarino. Graveside services at the Beth El Cemetery, 776 Baker St., West Roxbury, on Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 12 noon. In lieu of flowers remembrances in her memory may be made to D4ASNT Trust, 90 Craig St., Milton, MA 02186

Natalie Rosengard-of  Newton ,on March 23, 2011. Wife of Morton I. Brenner. Step mother of Elizabeth, Charles and Emily. Step grandmother of  Shane, Sophie, Miriam and Freeman. Sister of Donald Rosengard and his wife Joan. Aunt of Karen , Alan and Cynthia. Great Aunt  of  Renee, Steven, Alicia, Thomas , Daniel, Samantha, Elyssa, Owen , Sarah and their children. Services at Temple Sinai , 50 Sewall Ave. Brookline on Monday March 28, 2011 at 11:00 am. Following interment at Newton Cemetery,  memorial observance will be at her residence , 250 Hammond Pond Parkway ,(Apt. 401N) Chestnut Hill,  Monday thru Wednesday 4-8pm.In lieu of flowers remembrances may be made to Museum of Fine Arts , Children’s Education Program,  465 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA 02115. “She walks in beauty,like the night,”  Lord Byron.

Jack  Wolper MD  Of Scottsdale, Az. formerly of Quincy, on March 20, 2011 at age 74, after succumbing to a long battle with Hydrocephalus. Beloved husband of Salpi Rowinsky Wolper. Devoted step father of Eric Rowinsky. Survived by brother Howard Wolper and cousin Sandy Boyd and their families. Services will be held at Temple Sinai, 25 Canton St., Sharon on Friday, March 25, 2011 at 1pm. Burial will follow at Sharon Memorial Park, Sharon. In lieu of flowers remembrances may be made to Hospice of the Valley, 5111 North Scottsdale Rd., Suite 108, Scottsdale, Az. 85250.

by Bryan Marquard  Boston Globe

Brookline may now be a Democratic stronghold, the place Michael S. Dukakis began the first of many campaigns that led him to become a presidential nominee, but it was not always so. Until Sumner Kaplan came along, the town was solidly Republican.

• When Mr. Kaplan took his first step toward the State House in 1954, his victory was noted almost in passing, 15 paragraphs into a Globe roundup of election news: “For the first time in the history of Brookline, a Democrat was elected to the House of Representatives, the feat being accomplished by Sumner Kaplan.’’ Among the young reform-minded Democrats working on his campaign that fall was Dukakis.

“If it hadn’t been for Sumner, I never would have gotten actively involved in politics, and I’m not alone,’’ said Dukakis, who was elected to fill the same House seat eight years later when Mr. Kaplan ran for state Senate. “He was very much a transformative figure in state politics. And certainly for people like me and others who were touched by him and got deeply involved in his campaigns, he was everything.’’

Mr. Kaplan, who also served as a Brookline selectman, a brigadier general in the Army Reserve, and a probate and family court judge, died March 20 in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston of complications of congestive heart failure and lymphoma. He was 91 and had moved to Jamaica Plain 11 years ago after living most of his life in Brookline.

Rent control was Mr. Kaplan’s primary focus initially, but his approach to campaigning was just as important to his election. He went door to door and straphanger to straphanger, changing one voter’s mind at a time.

“Nobody had ever done that in Brookline,’’ Dukakis recalled. “This guy shows up at 7 in the morning at every one of the T stops in town. This was so different than anything this town had ever experienced, and it was a lesson for the rest of us. He was the mentor for us younger fry who were part of his crew, and in the course of moving Brookline out of the Republican column, he was a great role model.’’

On Beacon Hill, Mr. Kaplan did not shy from taking stands that bucked the prevailing mood. In the mid-1950s, when US Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin turned the red scare into something of a national obsession, the Massachusetts House passed a bill calling for public school teachers to be fired if they refused to say if they were Communists.

In an unsuccessful attempt to get the bill reconsidered, Mr. Kaplan questioned its constitutionality and said it turned teachers into “second-class citizens.’’

When the House debated capital punishment, Mr. Kaplan told the Globe that “only the poor man goes to the electric chair, because he cannot afford an expensive lawyer

• US Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, said that because of his military background, Mr. Kaplan “was a guy who showed that patriotism and liberalism are not contradictory.’’

“He also was able to be a very forceful advocate without being nasty,’’ Frank added. “We lament the lack of civility. He was the perfect example of somebody who was passionate and civil about issues. He was the opposite of a scary figure. He was a warm, open guy who had a lot of appeal.’’

Born in Boston, Sumner Zalman Kaplan was the youngest of three children and grew up in Dorchester and Roxbury until his family moved to Brookline during his senior year at Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1939.

He graduated from Massachusetts State College, now the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in 1941. During World War II, he rose to colonel while serving in the Army Corps of Engineers, then served for many years in the Army Reserve.

In 1944 he married Eleanor Fisher, with whom he had been fixed up on a date when she was 15 and he was 16.

“As a young boy, his reputation was of being very mischievous,’’ said his daughter Ruth of Brookline. “I think that would be a good way to characterize him his whole life, because there was a part of him that just enjoyed mischief.’’

Mr. Kaplan graduated from Harvard Law School in 1948 and worked as a lawyer, first in a firm, then in a practice with his brother and a friend. He also served as a Town Meeting member in Brookline and was on the Board of Selectmen for a dozen years, three as chairman.

In 1983, Governor Edward J. King appointed Mr. Kaplan to the probate and family court bench, and he served for a decade as a judge, including some years on a recall basis.

A service has been held for Mr. Kaplan, who remained active in political circles into his 80s and easily connected with people decades younger, whether they be aspirants for elective office or his five grandchildren, who called him Pal. The sobriquet originated when Mr. Kaplan was spending time with his first grandchild and said, “You know, we’re pals.’’

The nickname was appropriate for all he met, among them author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Mr. Kaplan helped officiate at her 1975 marriage to author and presidential adviser Richard Goodwin, who gave an emotional Town Meeting speech of his own about rent control in the early 1950s while working with Mr. Kaplan on that contentious issue in Brookline.

“You just fall in love with the guy,’’ she said of Mr. Kaplan. “You can’t help it.’’

She called him one of the rare public officials who combined a closeness with his family with devotion to the larger worlds of politics and the judiciary.

“If he’d never been involved publicly,’’ she said, “he still would have been an extraordinary man in the eyes of those who knew him, because he exerted that kindness and warmth.’’

For years after his best friend and former law partner, Howard Katz, moved to Israel, Mr. Kaplan visited every year and called every Sunday. The two discussed everything from politics to personal lives to the biblical passages read at weekly services.

“He wasn’t a guy out of sight, out of mind; he was always in mind,’’ Katz said. “I used to say of him, ‘Sumner had a compulsion to do good.’ He didn’t just do good — he had a compulsion, and he would never do anything to hurt anybody, even when he had a reason to be angry.’’

Because of his public roles and unfailing good nature, Mr. Kaplan was an emotional and intellectual resource for generations of people he encountered.

“So many people relied on him for help and guidance and support,’’ said his daughter Marjorie of New York City. “He was probably the most optimistic, enthusiastic, positive human being I and many other people will ever know. It was all about giving. . . . He never said no.’’

“My mother told me the other day, ‘I don’t think he ever tallied it up and measured the full impact of his life,’ and she’s right, he was never keeping count,’’ Ruth said. “Nobody was.’’

Tarnower-Helen “ Grandma  “at age 95,  surrounded by her loving family ,on March 22, 2011 . of  Newton,  formerly of Teaneck, NJ .Beloved wife of the late Irving  Tarnower .Devoted mother of Ann Baum  and Howie Tarnower and his wife Pam Swift  all of Newton. Beloved grandmother of   Jeff Baum and his wife Gulson Gul , Alison Hook and her husband Erik , Holly and Lydia  Tarnower  and amazing great grandmother to Sam and Amanda Hook and Zack Baum.In lieu of flowers remembrances may be made to Creative Arts at Park 171 Goodard Ave. Brookline, MA 02445

Harold L.CHALFIN,  Of Newton, on March 21, 2011. Beloved husband of Rose (Kramer) Chalfin. Devoted father of April Chalfin and her husband Preston Dortch of Lee MA, Mark Chalfin and his wife Beth of Long Beach CA, Beth Ravech and her husband Bruce of Needham. Cherished Pa of Jared Ravech, Lexie Ravech, Timothy Dortch, Lila Chalfin and Sadie Chalfin. Loving brother of Arlene Grusby, Barbara Ochs, Morton Chalfin and his wife Gerda and many loving nieces, nephews and friends. Services at Congregation Mishkan Tefila, 300 Hammond Pond Pkwy, Chestnut Hill on Thursday, March 24 at 10 A.M. Following the interment in Sharon Memorial Park, Sharon, the family will return to Congregtion Mishkan Tefila until 4 p.m. Memorial observance will continue at his residence on Friday 2-5 p.m., Saturday 7-9 p.m. and Sunday 12-5 p.m. Remembrances may be made to Parkinson’s Disease Assoc., 720 Harrison Ave., Boston, MA 02118 or to American Cancer Society, 30 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701 or the American Heart Assoc, 20 Speen St. Framingham, MA 01701.