R

Rosenberg, Pierre

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rosenberg, Pierre

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: France

Overview

Director of the Musée du Louvre, 1994-. He succeeded Michel Laclotte as director of the Louvre in 1994.

Sources

Riding, Alan. “Louvre’s New Director Shifts Gaze From Poussin to Security Problems; Louvre’s New Director Shifts Gaze From Poussin.” New York Times February 6, 1995, p. C11;

Director of the Musée du Louvre, 1994-. He succeeded Michel Laclotte as director of the Louvre in 1994.

Rosenblum, Bob

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rosenblum, Bob

Other Names:

Robert Rosenblum

Gender: male

Date Born: 24 July 1927

Date Died: 06 December 2006

Place Born: New York, NY, USA

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Career(s): curators

Overview

Modernist art historian; Professor Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1966-2006; Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of 20th-Century Art at the Guggenheim Museum 1996-2006. Rosenblum was the son of Abraham H. Rosenblum and Lily M. Lipkin (Rosenblum). His father was a New York dentist. After serving in the United States Army 1945-1946, he attended Queens College, receiving his B. A. in 1948, and Yale for his Master’s degree, awarded in 1950. He gained a Ph.D. at New York University, writing his dissertation under Walter Friedlaender in 1956. He taught as an instructor of fine arts at the University of Michigan, 1955-56, before moving to Princeton as an associate professor in 1956. In 1960, Rosenblum published his Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art, which solidified his reputation as a new-world modernist. Except for visiting professorships at Columbia University, 1960-61 and 1963, he remained at Princeton until 1966. That year he was appointed professor of fine arts at New York University where he remained the rest of his career. In 1967, Rosenblum took the theme of his dissertation, reworking it as the book Transformations in Late Eighteen-Century Art. This seminal work was based upon the idea of “turning points” of works of the early Modern period, an examination of the manner in which the French Revolution adopted neoclassical imagery and techniques. In 1975, Rosenblum participated in a major show of French Revolutionary art at the Metropolitan and Detroit, French Painting, 1774-1830: the Age of Revolution. The exhibition was praised for overthrowing the simplistic version of French Revolutionary art–one propounded by his NYU mentor Friedlaender as “David to Delacroix.” However, Rosenblum was criticized by art historians of the social history, such as Carol Duncan, for “neutralizing” the political issues behind the era’s painting in favor of stylistic concerns. He himself complained that the show, which was organized for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, with director Thomas Hoving, highlighted artists would who draw larger crowds rather than those most important. He was named Henry Ittleson, Jr. Professor of Modern European Art at NYU in 1976. At age 50 in 1978, Rosenblum married the 28-year-old artist Jane Kaplowitz. He was awarded the Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Award for Distinction in Art Criticism in 1981. In 1984 two books appeared, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition and the survey Art of the Nineteenth Century, the second co-authored with fellow NYU faculty Horst Woldemar Janson. In 1989 Rosenblum published his controversial Paintings in the Musee d’Orsay, a revisionist view of 19th-century art incorporating Cézanne, Manet and other mainstream avant-garde greats, along with previously disparaged academic artists such as William Bouguereau, in order to paint the larger picture of the art milieu. He was appointed Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of 20th-Century Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1996. In 2000 Rosenblum co-curated the exhibition “1900: Art at the Crossroads,” shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Guggenheim Museum. His students mounted a symposium in his honor two months before his death of colon cancer at age 79. Rosenblum was emblematic of the academic scholar of early modernism who made a public transition to contemporary art and high-profile museum world. His teaching, notably Princeton–one of the last schools to recognize modern art as a field of scholarship–and later NYU, gained him entre into the museum world which was looking for a higher pedigree for its exhibition catalogs. Though he never relinquished interest in the lesser-known (at least to the English-speaking world) northern-European artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and Vilhelm Hammershøi, some of his most insightful writing was on Picasso. His 1999 collected essays, On Modern American Art: Selected Essays, comprising forty year’s of writing (1958-1998) covered the range of modernist artists he critiqued, including Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollack, Andrew Wyeth, and Mark Rothko.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] The International Style of 1800: A Study in Linear Abstraction. New York University, 1956; Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko. New York: Harper & Row, 1975; Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1960; Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967; “Painting During the Bourbon Restoration, 1814-1830.” In, French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1975; “The Origin of Painting: A Problem in the Iconography of Romantic Classicism.” Art Bulletin 39 (1957): 279-90; Jean-August-Dominique Ingres. New York: 1967.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, pp. 67 mentioned, 126; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, pp.17, 48 mentioned, 70 cited; “Robert H. Rosenblum,” Contemporary Authors; [obituary:] Glueck, Grace. “Robert Rosenblum, Curator And Art Historian, Dies at 79.” New York Times December 9, 2006, p. 17.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen

Rosenthal, Earl E.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rosenthal, Earl E.

Other Names:

Earl Edgar Rosenthal

Gender: male

Date Born: 1921

Place Born: Milwaukee, WI, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Renaissance, and sculpture (visual works)

Career(s): educators

Overview

University of Chicago professor of renaissance art and architecture, 1954-. Rosenthal was son of Edgar Ernst Rosenthal and Renee Wyler (Rosenthal). He received his B. A. from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in 1943. After military service in World War II in the Naval Reserve,1943-46, he continued work in art history at New York University, writing a dissertation on the Cathedral of Granada in 1953. He returned to Milwaukee to shortly before completion of his degree to work as a curator for the Milwaukee Art Institute and Layton Art Gallery (modern Milwaukee Art Museum). In 1954 he was appointed assistant professor of art at the University of Chicago, where he remained the rest of his career. He was named associate professor in 1960. His dissertation was published by Princeton University Press in 1961. He received a 1963 Guggenheim grant. In 1964 Rosenthal wrote a groundbreaking article for the Art Bulletin on a work that had been previously thoroughly studied: Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. In it, he postulated that the extremes in proportion of the statue were due to the original intention to place the statue high on Julius II’s tomb. Rosenthal was appointed full professor of art history at Chicago in 1958. He was noted for his courses on the diffusion of the renaissance throughout Europe, emphasizing Spain’s contribution. He published a 1985 monograph on the palace of Charles V, also by Princeton University Press. Rosenthal’s method was noted for its careful examination of the facts (his books on Spanish architecture employed measurements of the monuments he personally made) and astute observation. His acknowledgement that Michelangelo’s Moses made sense only when it was observed dal di sotto in su (looking up from below), was typical of his original thinking, applied to art objects already heavily studied.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] The Cathedral of Granada: A Study in the Spanish Renaissance. New York University, 1953, revised and published as The Cathedral of Granada: A Study in the Spanish Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961; The Palace of Charles V in Granada. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985; “Image of Roman Architecture in Renaissance Spain.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 52 (December 1958): 329-46; “Michelangelo’s Moses, dal di sotto in su.” Art Bulletin 46 (December 1964): 544-50; “Plus ultra, non plus ultra, and the Columnar Device of Emperor Charles V.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 204-28.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 51 mentioned; personal information.

Rosenthal, Erwin

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rosenthal, Erwin

Gender: male

Date Born: 1889

Date Died: unknown

Overview

Selected Bibliography

The Changing Concept of Reality in Art. New York: Wittenborn, 1962; Contemporary Art in the Light of History. London: Lund Humphries, 1971; Giotto in der mittelalterlichen Geistesentwicklung. Augsburg: B. Filser, 1924.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Research Guide to the History of Western Art. Sources of Information in the Humanities, no. 2. Chicago: American Library Association, 1982, p. 154 mentioned; Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 98.

Rosenthal, Gertrude

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rosenthal, Gertrude

Gender: female

Date Born: 19 May 1906

Date Died: 08 May 1989

Place Born: Mayen, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany

Place Died: Baltimore, Baltimore Independent City, MD, USA

Home Country/ies: Germany and United States

Career(s): curators

Institution(s): Goucher College, Johns Hopkins University, and Universität Cologne

Overview

Curator of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Gertrude Rosenthal was born in 1906 to Daniel Rosenthal, a banker, and Rosalie Rosenthal. After her family moved to Cologne following the abrupt passing of her father, Rosenthal received her abitur in 1923. After receiving this degree, she worked in an office role for a chemical company in Cologne. At the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, she was the assistant at the bookstore from 1925-1927. She became, at around the same time, a journalist for Kölnische Zeitung, a role which she would hold until 1933. Her studies of art history, history, and the history of literature lasted from 1927-1931. She studied in Paris, Cologne, and Bonn under Albert Brinckmann and Paul Clemen. She completed her dissertation, Französische Bildhauerkunst unter dem Einfluß römischer Barockskulptur um die Wende des 18. Jahrhunderts, on the influence of Roman Baroque sculpture on French sculpture at the end of the 18th century. Rosenthal’s career progression from 1933-1939 is largely unknown. This is most likely the case because of the fact that she, similar to many other prominent Jews at the time, attempted to maintain an inconspicuous public profile so as to not attract the attention of the rising Nazi regime. In 1939, she emigrated to London where she worked as a research assistant at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 1940, she moved to Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She quickly found employment as an art librarian and lecturer at Goucher College. She held this role from 1940-1945, but she would ultimately pursue a career as a museum curator. Starting in 1943, she was a research assistant at the Walters Art Museum, in 1945 she became the Director of Research for the Museum, and then she became the General Curator from 1949-1956. From 1956-1968 she was the Chief Curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She worked intermittently as a guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and was the editor of Museum News from 1959-1963. During her tenure at both the Walters Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art, she organized several notable exhibitions, including Baltimore Furniture (1946), Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (1949), and The Age of Elegance, The Rococo and Its Effects (1959). She also organized the American Pavillion at the Venice Biennale.

Rosenthal held honorary doctorates from Goucher College and at the Maryland Institute. She was also a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. Her exhibitions had popular appeal to the arts community, and she was well-known for her securing of the Cone collection of works by Henri Matisse and other prominent artists (Russell).

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Französische Bildhauerkunst unter dem Einfluß römischer Barockskulptur um die Wende des 18. Jahrhunderts. University of Cologne, 1933;
Baltimore Furniture. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1946;
“An Italian rococo relief in Bernini’s tradition”.Walters Art Gallery (1942): 56-67;
“Matisses’s reclining figures. A theme and its variations”.Baltimore Museum News. (1956): 10-15;
The Age of Elegance. The Age of Rococo and its Effects. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art 1959;
1914. Baltimore Museum of Art 50th anniversary exhibition. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1964;
From El Greco to Pollock. Early and late works by European and American artists. Greenwich 1968;
Early and late works by European and American artists. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art 1968;
A comparative study of American and German romantic painting in the first half of the 19th century. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art 1968;
Italian paintings, 14-18th centuries from the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1981.

Sources

Wendland, Ulrike.Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 575-76;
Russell, John. “Gertrude Rosenthal, A Curator, Dies at 85” New York Times.

Contributors: Lee Sorensen and Paul Kamer

Rosenthal, Léon

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rosenthal, Léon

Gender: male

Date Born: 1870

Date Died: 1932

Home Country/ies: France

Overview

Director of the Musée des beaux-arts, Lyon, France and instructor of art history at the Lycee Louis le Grand. E. H. Gombrich credits Rosenthal with the observation that Botticelli’s popularity was primarily because his figures could have some many different attributes read into them.

Selected Bibliography

Sandro Botticelli et sa réputation à l’heure présente. Dijon: Librairie Générale F. Rey, 1897; and Rosenthal, Gabrielle. Carpaccio. Paris: H. Laurens, 1906; L’art et les artistes romantiques. Paris: Le Goupy, 1928; Ge´ricault. Paris: Librairie de l’art ancien et moderne, 1905; Villes et village français après la guerre: aménagement, restauration, embellissement, extension. Paris: Payot, 1918, partially translated into English as “Open spaces.A translation of chapter II, Part II of ‘Villes et Villages Francais Après la Guerre’.” Park International 1 (September 1920): 187-190; La peinture romantique: essai sur l’évolution de la peinture française de 1815 à 1830. Paris: L.H. May, 1900.

Sources

Gombrich, Ernst H. “Botticelli’s Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of His Circle.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (1945): 11, note 3.

Roskill, Mark W.

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Roskill, Mark W.

Other Names:

Mark Wentworth Roskill

Gender: male

Date Born: 1933

Date Died: 2000

Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK

Place Died: Amherst, Hampshire, MA, USA

Home Country/ies: United Kingdom

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Overview

Modernist art historian and scholar of art historiography and criticism. Roskill was the son of British naval historian Stephen Wentworth Roskill (1903 – 1982). His mother, Elizabeth Charlotte van den Bergh (Roskill) (b. 1904), was one of the first women to be trained at the Slade School of Art in London. The precocious though eccentric boy was sent to Eton, unhappily for him. He served in the British Army in the Intelligence Corps between 1951 and 1953, rising to second lieutenant. Roskill entered Trinity College, Cambridge. Listening to Nikolaus Bernard Leon Pevsner lecture on Saturday mornings, Roskill became further inspired to study art history. He joined the [Cambridge] Arts Society and organized a picture-lending collection. He organized the first art exhibition of “kitchen sink” artists John Bratby, Edward Middleditch, Jack Smith and Derrick Greaves, establishing his own career in the process. He also began to collect personally, inspired by his cousin, the collector Sir Robert Sainsbury (1906 – 2000). He graduated from Trinity with a B.A. in classics in 1956. Because few institutions in England offered degrees in art history, Roskill traveled to Harvard University where he completed an M. A. in art history in 1957. He entered the Courtauld Institute the same year, intent on writing his Ph.D. there. However, the Courtauld’s chairman, Anthony Blunt refused to recognize Harvard’s Master’s Degree and Roskill returned to the United States, teaching as an instructor in history of art at Princeton University in 1959 and working on his dissertation. He married Deirdre Toller in 1959 establishing permanent residency in United States the same year. Princeton awarded him both an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in 1961, with a dissertation on on 16th-century Venetian art theory. Roskill returned to Harvard in 1961 as an instructor, rising to assistant professor of history of art in 1963. He was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship for the 1965-1966 year. In 1968 he was appointed associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was promoted to professor of history of modern art in 1972. A second ACLS fellowship was given to him in 1974. He married a second time to Nancy Lee Muench in 1974. Roskill wrote one of the early modernist primers to art history, What Is Art History? in 1974. Roskill participated in the ‘Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism,” symposium in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title in 1989 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He organized the symposium “Hans Holbein: Paintings, Prints, and Reception”, held at the CASVA (Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts ) at the National Gallery of Art in Washgington, D. C., in 1997. Roskill died of cancer at age 66. Roskill was a poet whose work was published in many journals and anthologized.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Dolce’s “Arentino” and the Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento. Princeton, 1961, [also published in a revised form under the same title,] New York: College Art Association/New York University Press,1968; English Painting from 1500 to 1865. London: Thames & Hudson, 1959; edited, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. New York: Atheneum, 1963; Van Gogh, Gaugin and the Impressionist Circle. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1970; What Is Art History? New York: Harper, 1976; and Carrier, David. Truth and Falsehood in Visual Images. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983; The Interpretation of Cubism. Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1985; The Interpretation of Pictures. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989; Klee, Kandinsky, and the Thought of Their Time: A Critical Perspective. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992; The Languages of Landscape. College Station, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997; edited, and Hand, John Oliver. Hans Holbein: Paintings, Prints, and Reception. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 2001.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 4; [obituaries:] “Mark Roskill.” The Guardian (London), March 30, 2000, p. 20; “Mark W. Roskill, at 66; UMass Art History Teacher.” Union-News (Springfield, MA), February 22, 2000.

Ross, Ludwig

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Ross, Ludwig

Gender: male

Date Born: 1806

Date Died: 1859

Place Born: Gut Altekoppel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Place Died: Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): acropolises, Ancient Greek (culture or style), archaeology, Greek (language), Greek (modern language), and Greek (modern)

Career(s): directors (administrators)

Overview

Co-director of excavation of the Acropolis in mid-1830s, influential teacher at University of Athens (1837-1843); author of the first handbook of the archaeology of art in the modern Greek language (1841). Ross’ parents were peasants of Scottish origin. He initially studied medicine at Kiel before turning to classics, studying philosophy under August D. C. Twesten (1789-1876), history under Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785-1860), and classics under Gregor Wilhelm Nitzsch (1790-1861). It was at Kiel that he also met the early art historian of classical pottery, Otto Jahn. Ross continued private study in Copenhagen where he secured the first travel scholarship offered by the King of Denmark. He also studied with Gottfried Hermann (1772-1848) in Leipzig. In 1832 he left for Greece where he was appointed ephor (magistrate) of antiquities of the Peloponnese the following year and general ephor in 1834. In 1835 he began directing the excavations of the Acropolis. He was responsible for the careful preservation of the monuments and, with the architects Eduard Schaubert (1804-1860) and Hans Christian Hansen (1803-1883) restored the Temple of Nike. His book Der Tempel der Kike Apteros appeared in 1839. In 1837 Ross was appointed professor of archaeology at the university of Athens, where he lectured in modern Greek. He translated the Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst of Otfried Müller into Greek for the use of his students. In 1843 Ross returned to Germany to be professor of archaeology and mythology at the university in Halle. In 1850 he founded a short-lived monthly journal with Karl Gustav Schwetschke (1804-1881) and Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884), the Allgemeine Monatsschrift für Literatur.

Selected Bibliography

Archäologische Aufsätze. 2 vols. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1855-61; Inscriptiones Graecae ineditae. 3 vols. Naples: C. A. Rhallis, 1834-45; edited, Allgemeine Monatsschrift für Literatur 1850; Reisen nach Kos, Halikarnassos, Rhodos und der insel Cypern. Halle: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn, 1852, English, A Journey to Cyprus (February and March 1845). Nicosia: printed at the ‘Phone’ Office, 1910; Ausgrabung von Olympia: ein Vorschlag. Braunschweig: M. Bruhn, 1853; Die Pnyx und das Pelasgikon in Athen: zur Wahrung der Topographie von Athen gegen einige neuere Zweifel. Braunschweig: C. A. Schwetschke, 1853; Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln des ägäischen Meeres. 3 vols. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1840-845; and Schaubert, Eduard, and Hansen, Christian. Die Akropolis von Athen nach den neuesten ausgrabungen: erste Abtheilung: der Temple der Nike Apteros. Berlin: Schenk und Gerstaecker, 1839; Kleinasien und Deutschland. Reisebriefe und Aufsätze mit Bezugnahme auf die Möglichkeit deutscher Niederlassungen in Kleinasien. Halle: C. E. M. Pfeffer, 1850;[loose translation of K. Otfried Müller’s Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst:] Encheiridion tes archaiologias ton technon. Athens: Ek tes Vasilikes Typographias, 1841.

Sources

Archäologenbildnisse: Porträts und Kurzbiographien von Klassichen Archäologen deutscher Sprache. Reinhard Lullies, ed. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1988: 27-28; Petropoulou, Angeliki. “Ross, Ludwig (1806-59).” Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology. Nancy Thomson de Grummond, ed. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 983-84.

Rossi, Filippo

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rossi, Filippo

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Italy

Overview

Sopreintendente of the Museums and Galleries of Florence, Arezzo and Pistoia. Translated Schlosser’s Die Kunstliteratur (Kurz revision) into Italian.

Selected Bibliography

Art Treasures of the Uffizi and Pitti. New York, N. H. Abrams, 1957; Capolavori di oreficeria italiana: dall XI al XVIII secolo. Milan: Electa Editrice, 1956, English, Italian Jeweled Arts. New York: Abrams, 1954; Il museo Horne a Firenze. Milan: Electa, 1967; Il Museo nazionale di Firenze (Palazzo del Bargello). Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1937; Mirone e Policleto. Florence: Alinari, 1922; La scultura ellenistica: Pergamo. Florence: Fratelli Alinari Soc. An. I.D.E.A., 1924, translated into Italian, Kurz, Otto, editor. Schlosser, Julius von. La letteratura artistica: manuale delle fonti della storia dell’arte moderna. 3rd edition. Florence: Nouva Italia, 1964.

Sopreintendente of the Museums and Galleries of Florence, Arezzo and Pistoia. Translated Schlosser’s Die Kunstliteratur (Kurz revision) into Italian.

Rookmaaker, Hans

November 8, 2023March 29, 2024

Full Name: Rookmaaker, Hans

Other Names:

H. R. Rookmaaker

Gender: male

Date Born: 27 February 1922

Date Died: 13 March 1977

Place Born: The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands

Place Died: Ommeren, Gelderland, Netherlands

Home Country/ies: Netherlands

Subject Area(s): art theory, French (culture or style), nineteenth century (dates CE), painting (visual works), and Post-Impressionist

Overview

Scholar of Gauguin and 19th-century art; early interest in art theory. Rookmaaker was the son of Henderik Roelof Rookmaaker (1887-1945) and Theodora Catharina Heitink (1890-1971). Rookmaaker grew up traveling between The Hague and Sumatra, then part of the Dutch East Indies, where his father served as Governor (Resident) until his early retirement in 1936. After he finished high school in Leiden, Rookmaaker attended the Naval College in Den Helder. The Naval College closed at the outbreak of World War II and Rookmaaker became engaged to Riki Spetter (1919-1942) in 1940. While distributing leaflets for the Underground Resistance movement, he was arrested by the Nazis in March 1941 and imprisoned in Scheveningen, near The Hague. Though released in December, he was rearrested in April 1942, spending the next three years in Nazi POW camps in Poland and Germany. During those times of hardship Rookmaaker studied the Bible thoroughly and became interested in the work of the Reformed Christian philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). In the meantime, Rookmaaker’s fiancée, Riki, who was Jewish, died at the Auschwitz extermination camp in 1942 (a fact revealed only after Rookmaaker’s death). After the war Rookmaaker was baptized and became a member of the Reformed Church. He chose for a career in art history, with a view to exploring connections between art and his Christian convictions. Together with his recently widowed mother he moved to Amsterdam, where he enrolled at Amsterdam University to study art history. In 1949 he married Anky Huitker (1915-2003). Rookmaaker became an art critic for the daily newspaper Trouw, and after having received his B.A., he obtained an assistantship under I. Q. van Regteren Altena at his Alma Mater. He graduated in 1953 and taught the next three years at the Spinoza High School in Amsterdam. In 1957 he became an art critic for the bi-weekly Opbouw, and in addition was appointed assistant to Henri Van de Waal at Leiden University. In 1959, he obtained his doctor’s degree from Amsterdam University with a dissertation on Synthetist art theories, Synthetist Art Theories: Genesis and Nature of the Ideas on art of Gauguin and his Circle, written in English (republished in 1972 as Gauguin and 19th Century Art Theory), under the supervision of van Regteren Altena. Like his father Rookmaaker was an avid Jazz enthusiast. In 1960 he published the book Jazz, Blues, Spirituals. In 1961 he traveled to the USA and Canada on a grant from the Dutch government to study methodologies of art education at Boston University and various colleges in New York State. During this trip his contact with black music and in particular his meeting with Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972) made a deep impression on him. Rookmaaker grew increasingly conservative in his outlook on modern art. In 1962 he published Kunst en amusement (Art and Entertainment). At his 1965 appointment professor of art history at the (Christian Reformed) Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (VU), he delivered an inaugural lecture, “De kunstenaar een profeet?” (The Artist as a Prophet?), arguing that modern art should not necessarily be regarded as prophetic. In addition to his teaching in Amsterdam he often lectured at universities and conferences in the United Kingdom and the USA on modern art, popular music and culture. This was the basis for his 1970 publication, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. In 1971, Rookmaaker and his wife founded a Christian study center, Dutch L’Abri, in Eck en Wiel, in the province of Gelderland, modeled on L’Abri in Switzerland, created by their American friends Francis and Edith Schaeffer. The family moved to nearby Ommeren in 1975. Rookmaaker suddenly died in 1977. He is buried at the church at Eck en Wiel. The following year, Art Needs No Justification appeared. His wife donated his papers to Wheaton College, Illinois, where he had lectured in the 1970s. His daughter Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker edited his complete works in 6 volumes in 2002-2003. Rookmaaker, in his Synthetist Art Theories, was one of three principal art historians to write book-length treatises in English in the 1950’s on the art period known as Symbolism, along with John Rewald and Sven O. Lövgren, each taking a radically different approach to the subject. In his book, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture Rookmaaker firmly expressed his strong disapproval of what he saw as the irrational content of certain art works by artists like Picasso, and surrealists, including Dali, which in his view did not reflect the reality of the God-given creation, but represented a world of nihilism and absurdity. His conservative stance toward modern art draws similarities with Hans Sedlmayr, particularly Sedlmayr’s book Verlust der Mitte (Loss of the Center). Rookmaaker’s Modern Art and the Death of a Culture was acclaimed in certain Reformed Christian circles, but received negative reactions from Dutch art historians who were critical of the author’s views on art, which they saw as biased. His Amsterdam students complained that his approach to art was too speculative and too involved with theology.

Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Synthetist Art Theories: Genesis and Nature of the Ideas on art of Gauguin and his Circle. University of Amsterdam, 1959, published, Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1959, republished under the title Gauguin and 19th Century Art Theory. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1972; [complete works:] Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, Marleen (ed.) The Complete Works of Hans R. Rookmaaker. 6 vols. Carlisle, UK: Piquant, 2002-2003; Jazz, Blues, Spirituals. Wageningen: Zomer & Keuning, 1960; Kunst en Amusement. Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1962; De kunstenaar een profeet? Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1965; Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1971; Art Needs No Justification. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1978; [collected essays:] The Creative Gift: Essays on Art and the Christian Life. Westchester, IL: Cornerstone Books, 1981.

Sources

Kleinbauer, W. Eugene. Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th-Century Writings on the Visual Arts. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 4; Martin, Linette. Hans Rookmaaker: a Biography. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1979; [on Rookmaaker’s esthetic] Begbie, Jeremy S. Voicing Creation’s Praise. Edinbugh: T & T Clark, 1991, pp. 127-141; Birtwistle, Graham. “H. R. Rookmaaker: The Shaping of his Thought” in Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, Marleen (ed.). The Complete Works of Hans R. Rookmaaker. 1. Art, Artists and Gauguin. Carlisle, UK: Piquant, 2002, pp. xv-xxxiii; Gasque, Laurel. Art and the Christian Mind: the Life and Work of H. R. Rookmaaker. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005; http://www.wheaton.edu/learnres/ARCSC/collects/sc18/index.php! [obituaries:] “Bij het heengaan van Prof Dr. Rookmaaker” VU Magazine (April 1977); Jaffé, H. L. C. Lier en Boog (January 1978): 82.

Contributors: Monique Daniels

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