Johann Heinrich Roos

Johann Heinrich Roos died in Frankfurt in October 1685 after a fire broke out in his house. The story told by Arnold Houbraken, the Dutch biographer of painters, is that he died trying to save his belongings. He was 54, and in Frankfurt he had done well.

He was born in 1631 in the Palatinate, in south-west Germany, and the Thirty Years' War drove his family to Amsterdam when he was a boy. There he trained with three masters, in history painting, landscape and portraiture, but the painters who shaped him most were two Dutch Italianates, Nicolaes Berchem and Karel Dujardin, with their shepherds and cattle in warm southern light. Pastoral landscapes with animals and ancient ruins became his speciality.

Back in Germany he worked for courts, first for Landgrave Ernst of Hesse at Rheinfels Castle on the Rhine, then from 1664 for the Elector Palatine in Heidelberg, before settling in Frankfurt in 1667. He had married in 1656, and all four of his sons and his only daughter became painters. One son, Philipp Peter Roos, made his career in Italy, where he was known as Rosa da Tivoli.