Oil painting on canvas. Johann Heinrich Roos

Oil painting on canvas. Johann Heinrich Roos (Otterberg, September 29, 1631 - Frankfurt am Main, October 3, 1685). Family of shepherds with herds and landscape in the background. 60x100, Monogram on lower right H R.

"His family emigrated to Amsterdam because of the Thirty Years War in 1640. He was a pupil of Guilliam du Gardijn, Cornelis de Bie and Barent Graat, but the landscape painters Nicolaes Berchem and Karel Dujardin have had the greatest influence on him. In 1653 the Roos family back to Germany, where Johann and his brother Theodor Roos work together on a commission for a cloister in Mainz. Between 1654 and 1659, Johann worked for Ernst, Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels (son of Maurice, lived between 1623 and 1693), where he painted a portrait of A Prince (1654, Heidelberg, Kurpfälzisches Museum) and religious scenes. In 1664 he was invited to paint at the court of Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine. Because of poor working conditions, he moved back with his family to Frankfurt in 1667, where he was very successfull, but lost everything in a fire in 1685. The painting in question seems to be the best that could express the painter, when he wanted to represent the union of men and animals in idyllic harmony with nature - this was what he thought could aspire to give his paintings a realistic character footprint, especially in rural scenes and depictions of animals. In the present case, there is a sense of realism, almost familiar, that globalization in a union harmonizing landscape, and therefore nature, humans and animals. If we were induced to a comparison with his son Philipp Peter, we could say that is much more moody and intimate in the search for a link with the whole of nature, and less theatrical, almost not wanting to be enfatizzante as the son, who often adopts in the foreground scenes of animals and depictions portraiture almost the same. Roos is exposed in the following collections: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt; Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco; Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; Crocker Art Museum, California; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Palazzo Bianco, Genoa, among others."STUDIO ASOR