Charles Ross

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Gravestones of the Ross brothers in Bornhöved

Charles Roß , originally Karl Ross (born November 18, 1816 on the Altekoppel farm in Ruhwinkel , † February 5, 1858 in Munich ) was a German painter .

Family and education

Karl Ross grew up as one of 10 children of Collin Ross and his wife Juliane Auguste nee. Remin in his birthplace not far from Plön . His brothers included the archaeologist Ludwig Ross and the orthopedist Gustav Ross .

At the age of 16, Roß went to Copenhagen in 1832 for an apprenticeship in room painting , where he called himself “Charles” because of his family's Scottish roots. In his free time he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Art , which was then one of the most renowned art academies in Europe and where the German romantics Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge had already studied. There he acquired the attention of professors Ludwig Lund and Wilhelm Eckersberg , who had previously (1827–1829) been director of the academy with his work . After two years he won the academic painting award and the then Crown Prince and later King Christian VIII acquired several of his small oil paintings. Ross's focus at that time was still on animal painting.

Greek creative period (1837–1839)

In the summer of 1837 he followed his 10 years older brother, the archaeologist Ludwig Ross , to Athens, where the first Professor of Archeology at the straight by King I. Otto founded Ottonische University took over. After brief stays with Johann Paul Mohr in Heidelberg and in the Bavarian Inn Valley , he arrived in Greece in September 1837. It was here that Charles Ross discovered his love for landscape painting and, in the following two years, became the first German painter to create numerous Hellenic landscape studies. He found accommodation with the Austrian envoy in Athens, Anton Prokesch von Osten , who received him a. a. escorted to marathon . His travel companions also included the poet and historian Adolf Friedrich von Schack , who reported on their shared adventures in his book "Meine Gemäldesammlung" (1894) and with whom he visited Sparta , Smyrna , Ephesus and Magnesia , and the painter Carl Rottmann , who had been in Greece since 1834 on behalf of the king and had been commissioned with a landscape cycle.

Time in Munich, Rome and Paris (1839–1848)

In 1839 Ross returned to Germany, settled in Munich and carried out numerous studies in the area and in the Bavarian Alps . In the summer of 1842 he moved to his homeland in Schleswig-Holstein , but in November he and his brother Ludwig, who had returned from Athens, set out for Rome via Munich in November , where he spent the following year. There he made friends with the painters Carl Rahl and Ernst Willers , but had to leave Italy again due to a fever in 1843, retired to his father's estate near Eutin and then lived for a few years in his home in Holstein, from which he borrowed a lot of motifs . In Rome Ross had also met Helene Abendroth, daughter of the respected Hamburg merchant and art patron August Abendroth . He recommended Ross a stay in Paris , the then "capital of art", in order to better establish himself in the art world.

Following the advice, Ross went to Paris for a few months in the winter of 1845 and took Helene with him as a pupil. He admired the Barbizon School founded by Théodore Rousseau for their advanced technique, but not for their compositions. After his return, Ross married Helene Abendroth in 1847, even if his stay in Paris had not entirely dispelled his father-in-law's concerns about a largely unknown artist as a son-in-law.

Diplomat during the Schleswig-Holstein uprising (1848–1850)

During the Schleswig-Holstein uprising against Denmark in 1848, Duke Friedrich von Schleswig-Holstein and the later governor of Schleswig-Holstein, Friedrich Count von Reventlou , sent him to Berlin to meet the then head of the Augustenburg line of the House of Oldenburg , Christian August von Schleswig- Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg to report on the survey, to obtain the recognition of the provisional government and to solicit auxiliary troops from King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia. On his return he took part in the survey and took part in various political meetings in Schleswig-Holstein. But when Prussia signed an armistice on July 10, 1849 and a separate peace with Denmark on July 2, 1850 on behalf of the German Confederation, the rebels in Schleswig-Holstein were left to fend for themselves. Ross withdrew into his private life, first went to Munich with his wife and then to Rome in the winter of 1850/51. However, the couple returned to Munich as early as 1851 and took up permanent residence there.

Munich creative period (1850-1858)

Here Ross entered his most extensive creative phase and celebrated a. a. with his picture "Naxos" 1855 at the great Paris exhibition successes. In 1855 his friend from Athens, Adolf von Schack, also came to Munich, where he built up an extensive collection of valuable pictures from the 19th century and repeatedly bought large oil paintings from him.

At the height of his fame, Ross fell ill with typhus in the winter of 1857/58 and died on February 5, 1858 at the age of only 42 in Munich. Following his wish, however, he found his final rest in his home in Schleswig-Holstein and so he was buried in the cemetery in Bornhöved .

Charles Roß was a member of the Hamburg Artists' Association from 1832 . For many years, an idyllically located excursion restaurant with a Ross memorial room was set up on the Altekoppel farm near Ruhwinkel. The Charles-Roß-Ring in Kiel- Steenbek-Projensdorf and the Charles-Roß-Weg in Ruhwinkel are named after him.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edith Feiner: Ross, Gustav. In: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon. Volume 4. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1976, p. 198.
  2. ↑ Hans-G. Hilscher, Dietrich Bleihöfer: Charles-Roß-Ring. In: Kiel Street Lexicon. Continued since 2005 by the Office for Building Regulations, Surveying and Geoinformation of the State Capital Kiel, as of February 2017 ( kiel.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Ross, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ross, Karl (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1816
PLACE OF BIRTH Angle of rest
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1858
Place of death Munich