Ross, Marvin C.

Full Name: Ross, Marvin Chauncey

Other Names:

• Marvin C. Ross

Gender: male

Date Born: 21 November 1904

Date Died: 24 April 1977

Place Died: Washington, DC, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Byzantine (culture or style), decorative arts (discipline), Medieval (European), and Russian (culture or style)

Career(s): art historians and curators

Institution(s): Harvard University and The Walters Art Museum

Overview

Authority in Byzantine, Medieval, Russian, and primitive decorative arts; curator. Ross was born to William Edwin Ross (1870-1945) and Mary Katherine Rogers (Ross) (1875-1939) in Moriches, New York. He studied at the University of Berlin during the summer of 1927. Ross received an A.B. in 1928 and an M.A. in 1930 from Harvard University. During his M.A., he worked as an instructor in Fine Arts at the University of Pittsburgh (1928-1929). In 1930, he began his Ph.D. under George H. Chase on Romanesque enamels, presumably left unfinished, as often happened at that time. He also studied at the Centro de Estudios Históricos in Madrid (1930), and New York University (1933-34, 1937). Ross was as an assistant at the Brooklyn Museum in 1934. The same year, he joined the Walters Art Gallery (now the Walters Art Museum) in Baltimore as a research assistant, becoming the Associate Curator of Byzantine and Medieval Art in 1937, later adding Decorative Arts.

During World War II, Ross first enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942 and then was selected by Geoffrey Webb to assist with administrative work for the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) Section, known as the Monuments Men. In 1944, Ross discovered the panels of the famous Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald in occupied Alsace. Upon returning to the United States, Ross resumed his role as Associate Curator at the Walters. In 1947, he organized the first major exhibition of Early Christian and Byzantine Art in the U.S. at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

He moved to California in 1952 to head the Art Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Ross collaborated with Edward S. King on a book, Catalogue of the American Works of Art: including French Medals made for America [in] the Walters Art Gallery, which was published in 1956. In 1958, art collector Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973) appointed him Chief Curator of her collection of eighteenth-century French and Imperial Russian at Post’s private art collection and grounds, Hillwood, Washington, D.C.

Ross was a Fulbright Lecturer on Byzantine art at the Kunsthistorisches Institute at the University of Vienna (1960-1961). He authored the first two volumes of the Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Medieval Antiquities at Dumbarton Oaks, published in 1962 and 1965, covering metalwork, ceramics, glass, jewelry, enamels, and glyptics. Kurt Weitzmann authored the third volume, focusing on ivories and steatites. In 1965, Ross spent the rest of his life at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, devoting himself to making the museum’s collection of medieval and Byzantine art one of the best in the United States. That same year, he published The Art of Karl Fabergé and His Contemporaries, a catalog of the Post collection, followed by Russian Porcelains in 1969. Ross died in 1977, leaving two books and a catalog for an upcoming exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art unfinished. Ross’s wife, Lotus Bobb (Ross) (1893-1969), was a Broadway actress.

Ross made groundbreaking contributions to Byzantine, Medieval art and Russian art. His work Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Medieval Antiquities at Dumbarton Oaks was “a model of its kind” (Beckwith). In addition, The Art of Karl Fabergé and His Contemporaries further the discourse on lesser-known Russian artists such as Fabergé, despite Sprague’s criticism of the book as a “glorified catalogue of part of the personal collection of Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post.” Ross’s summaries “are admirably succinct, and his authority is marked throughout.”(Beckwith)

Ross was a Guggenheim fellow four times, a member of the American Association of Museums, the Archaeological Institute of America, and the committee of Hammond-Harwood House.

Selected Bibliography

• “Shaef and the Protection of Monuments in Northwest Europe.” College Art Journal 5, no. 2 (1946): 119–22.
• “War Damage in Chartres.” College Art Journal 5, no. 3 (1946): 229–31.
• The West of Alfred Jacob Miller (1837), from the notes and watercolors in the Walters Art Gallery, with an account of the artist. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1951.
• and Glanville Downey. “An Emperor’s Gift, and Notes on Byzantine Silver Jewelry of the Middle Period.” The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 19/20 (1956): 22–33.
• and King, Edward S. Catalogue of the American Works of Art: including French Medals Made for America in the Walters Art Gallery. Baltimore: Trustees of the Gallery, 1956.
• Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Mediaeval Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection. Vol 1, 2. United States: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1962, 65.
• The Art of Karl Fabergé and His Contemporaries; Russian Imperial Portraits and Mementoes (Alexander III-Nicholas II) Russian Imperial Decorations and Watches. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
• Russian Porcelains; the Gardner, Iusupov, Batenin … Factories. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.

Sources

• [obiturary]: “Marvin Chauncey Ross (1904-77).” The Burlington Magazine 119, no. 897 (1977): 858–858.“ http://www.jstor.org/stable/879040.
• “Theses and Dissertations. Fine Arts and Allied Fields.” Parnassus 2, no. 5 (1930): 44–45.
• “Art Treasure Found”. Charlotte Observer, vol. 76, December.13, 1944. P.2.
  “Altar Screen Found Safe: Masterpiece Stolen by Germans Recovered Near Colmar.” New York Times, 1944 Dec 31, p.6.
• Beckwith, John. The Burlington Magazine 105, no. 729 (1963): 565–565.
• Sprague, Arthur. Slavic Review 25, no. 3 (1966): 553–54.
• Beckwith, John. The Burlington Magazine 109, no. 766 (1967): 43–43.
• Vikan, Gary. Catalogue of the Sculpture in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection from the Ptolemaic Period to the Renaissance. United States: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1995.
• Glenn McNatt, “Our ‘Monuments Men’  – A Program at The Walters Honors Two Local Men Who Helped Recover Thousands of Priceless Artworks Stolen by the Nazis Before and During World War II.” Sun, The (Baltimore, MD). February 8, 2014. p.17A.
• Campbell, Elizabeth, Museum Worthy: Nazi Art Plunder in Postwar Western Europe. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2023. P.54.
• “Marvin C. Ross – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation….” n.d. Accessed July 6, 2024. https://www.gf.org/fellows/marvin-c-ross/.
• “Marvin Ross: Monuments Man.” n.d. Hammond-Harwood House. Accessed July 6, 2024. https://hammondharwoodhouse.org/exhibition/marvin-ross-monuments-man/.
• “Ross, Capt. Marvin C., USMCR | Monuments Men and Women | Monuments Men Foundation.” n.d. MonumentsMenWomenFnd. Accessed July 6, 2024. https://www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/ross-capt-marvin-c-usmcr.

Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang