Charles Shepard Chapman, painter, printmaker, illustrator, and teacher, was born in Morristown, New York in 2 June 1879. He attended high school through his junior year but he continued his studies at the Pratt Institute between 1896 and 1898, and at the Chase School of Art, which became the New York School Art, in 1899 with William Merritt Chase and Walter Appleton Clark. He married Ada B. Ahrens in 1911 and they settled into a home at 156 Sylvan Avenue in Leona, New Jersey.

Chapman taught for a time at the Art Students League in New York, and then he opened a school of illustration in Leona with Harvey Dunn. He was commissioned to paint murals by the Museum of Natural History in New York, the American Museum of Natural History, and at a West Virginia Post Office. Chapman traveled west to California in 1923, journeyed to San Juan in 1931, and later in that decade he spent long periods of time at the Grand Canyon and other points west. 

He was a member of and exhibited at the Salmagundi Club where his work garnered numerous awards. He was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1919 and elevated to full Academician in 1926; his work was included in exhibitions at the National Academy between the years 1908 and 1950. Chapman is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Charles Shepard Chapman died in Leona, New Jersey on 15 December 1962.