The animal painter Johann Heinrich Roos, 1631 - 1685
Citation: “Roos is untiring in active design of the hair and wool of its goat and sheep, and at the infinite detail you sees that he enjoyed the purest blessedness during the work… The real, trueful large talent finds his size in the execution.”
Goethe should be our witness here for the appreciation, which enjoyed Johann Heinrich Roos also hundred years after his death. Already his contemporaries see the master and activator in him, they give him even the title “Raffael of all cattle painters”, and in the area of the design and erasure they gradates him as one of the main master of Germany in 17. Century.
Johann Heinrich Roos was born 1631, probably on 29 September, “to Michaeli”. The data, concerning the place of birth, are contradictory. Joachim of Sandrat, painter and art writer of the 17. Century, calls Roos “painter from Otterberg”. That faces an entry in the trusting book of the Evangelist-reformed Pfarrei pc. Goar. It registers on 14 October 1656: “The bridegroom (J.H.Roos) is born in Reuppelskirchen/Palatinate”. Because the birth certificates and the church books from Reipoltskirchen and Otterberg obvious became victim to the chaos of the 30-year-war, the place of birth cannot be determined with absolute certainty. His baptism could possibly have taken place in Otterberg; there was a reformed parish; Reipoltskirchen possessed a lutherische at that time.
Few years later the family had to leave the palatinate, in order not to be suspended the suppression by the marauded Croats, which destroyed Kaiserslautern in 1635. The escape finally led the family 1640 to Amsterdam. Here Johann Heinrich began 1647 a 4-5 year apprenticeship by Netherlands landscapists and portrayers. After the apprenticeship, he lived in Mainz and on castle “Rheinfels” near to pc. Goar probably primarily on order work, whose yield made it for him possible, to start a family with the daughter of an alsatian pastor. One year later is born his first son, Philipp Peter, who should later become famous as “Rosa da Tivoli” with his Italian landscape- and animal paintings.
With the appointment to the court painter and porträtist (“Contrafaiter”) of the electors family by the elector “Carl Ludwig of the palatinate” his years of training and travelling are terminated. He can be called now established. But the years in Heidelberg and the relationship to the elector do not seem to have been very fruitful, because already in October 1667 he goes to Frankfurt. His reputation was now strengthened in such a way that he could gain a foothold in the realm city, also against the resistance of the painter guild, which asked the advice of the city, “To point further” the intruder. Roos got a residence permit, however as reformist not the citizen right in the lutheran Frankfurt.
Nearly 20 years Roos worked in Frankfurt. Which were the most beautiful and most fruitful years of his life. For this time his work counts several hundreds oil, mainly shepherd idyls, additional Portraits, still lifes, history pictures, biblical motives, soldier scenes and even gypsy camps. Owing to a continuous quality, Roos' pictures enjoyed of large popularity, which help the artist to a certain prosperity, which permitted him to change his first dwelling in “Sachsenhausen” against a substantial house on the "Zeil". That Roos became this noble address the calamity, he could not suspect. On 2. October 1685 a large fire broke out on the "Zeil", which seized also the Roos' house. Roos tried to save, which was to be saved - so “a porcelain jug with golden cover” (!) - he tightened himself apparent a smoke poisoning, on whose consequences he died, straight 54 years old.