Severin Rosen
German, 1815 ca.-1872 (active USA)

Still Life, 1848
oil on canvas
25 x 35 in.

SBMA, Gift of Mrs. Sterling Morton to the Preston Morton Collection
1960.79

The Williamsport Sun and Banner reported in 1895:
His studio was much frequented by his friends, who would sit all day with this genial, well-read and generous companion, smoking his pipes and drinking his beer, and he was seldom without this beverage . . .. In one corner of the finished painting would always appear the faint outline of a beer glass, and when a customer objected to its presence, he would say, 'Why, do you not like beer?' and then take it out.


RESEARCH PAPER

The painting was lined at an unknown date and its general condition is secure. The canvas is covered with a thin white ground, which does not obscure the texture. The paint is applied smoothly except for some fine impasto and scrumbling over darker colors. The early history is unknown, but a letter from the librarian at M. Knoedler and Company states that it was purchased from Mrs. Paul Magriel in May 1955 and notes that Paul Magriel got it from someone else who got it at a country auction in Connecticut. It was sold to Mrs. Sterling Morton in 1960.

THE ARTIST
Severin Roesen, the most prolific still-life artist in America in the mid-nineteenth century, has no certain place or date of birth recorded. It is thought he was born in 1815 in or near Cologne, and that he was a porcelain and enamel painter who exhibited a flower painting at the Cologne art club in 1847. Possibly he studied at the nearby Dusseldorf Art Academy. As a flower painter, he must have known the work of Dusseldorf's leading still-life artist, Johann Wilhelm Preyer (1799-1889). Preyer has visited Holland in 1835 to study the still-lifes of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Dutch Masters, Jan van Huysum and Rachel Ruysch. His canvases were later shown at the Dusseldorf galleries in New York in 1851.

Roesen and his future wife, Wilhelmina Ludwig, were immigrants who came to America in 1845 to escape political upheavals in Germany. Their first of three children, a daughter was born in 1851. They settled in New York where Roesen exhibited his still-lifes with the American Art-Union in 1848, and 1850. One of his paintings was sold in 1852.

In 1857, Roesen probably left his family in New York and went to Philadelphia. The financial panic of 1857, as well as the introduction of important new styles of painting from France and England's Pre-Raphaelite Show in New York that same year, materially affected the sale of his work. From Philadelphia, Roesen went to Harrisburg where he sold two large paintings in 1859. The next year, he traveled to Huntington, and by 1862, he had settled in the wealthy community of Williamsport, where his work continued to be popular, and where he remained active for the next ten years. In 1872, he probably left Williamsport to rejoin his family in New York where his first grandchild had been born. His last dated painting was finished in 1872, after which he drops from view, and we have no date or place of his death.

When Roesen arrived in New York, he brought in his art, influences of the lush 17th century Dutch and floral painting with its meticulous attention to detail interpreted in clear, sharp light and intense colors of the Dusseldorf school. His work contrasted markedly with that of the earlier American still-life painters. In comparison with Roesen's strikingly colored, elaborate floral compositions and luscious fruit displays, the early 19th century American style appeared spare and austere.

His work also contrasted in subject matter. Earlier American still-life artists had concerned themselves predominately with fruit compositions. Flowers, when painted, were generally shown from a botanical point of view, or as adjuncts to portraiture.

The chronology of Roesen's work is vague; many of his paintings are not signed or dated. Acknowledged works are thought to be the ones of which the artist was most proud. In most of his paintings he used similar groupings of fruit and flowers with only slight variations in content or assembly, giving rise to the view that he kept templates of arrangements he found particularly successful. Roesen's art made the 17th century Dutch tradition and the clear intense color of the Dusseldorf school available in this country at a time when American flowers and fruit paintings were quite small and still-life was considered a lesser art when compared to portraiture, landscape and historical painting. His style, as well as his gigantic paintings gave considerable impetus to the popularity of the still-life genre in this country.

THE PAINTING
In his flower paintings, Roesen almost invariably included two different species of old or antique roses, both of which were represented in paintings of earlier European masters. In the SBMA painting, these two roses are nestled in the center of the flower group as they are in so many of the Dutch still-lifes. The snake-like tendrils at the top of the composition are another European motif favored by Roesen. He used the tendrils to form his most characteristic signature.

The horizontal composition is a loose triangle of fruits and flowers resting on a white marble ledge, which, extends off the canvas to the right. The painting is divided vertically. Each half, fruit on the right and flowers on the left, is a triangle in itself and could stand-alone. At the lower left center, a bunch of green grapes on their stem and a pink rose meet and overhang the marble ledge, drawing attention to the asymmetric center of the composition. From there, the green grapes and stem, a pear and several grape leaves form a strong diagonal of analogous greens rising from left to right. At the top, a white tip on the grape stem against the yellow-brown background marks the apex of the fruit triangle. The blue red plums backed by a bunch of purple grapes form its right-hand corner. To the left, the red, orange and yellow of a peach brings the eye back to the central green pear, completing the color wheel sequence.

The floral half is a vertical triangle, which has as its apex the calla lily, starkly white against the dark red-brown background. The blues, reds and white of the flower contrast strongly with the predominately yellow-greens in the fruit triangle. Broken flower stems and the fallen rose speak of the brief life and fragility of flower, emphasizing the ripe firm weight of the fruit.

CONCLUSION
Severin Roesen arrived in this country as a young man but a mature artist. The quality of his work varied, but his best work was consistently of high caliber. Although his painting numbered in the hundreds, his style changed very little. He was not influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite fidelity to nature or Ruskin's appeal for humble naturalness. Roesen, the man became an American citizen, but in his art he remained German.

Prepared for the SBMA Docent Council by Kay Wall, March 1988.


SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Little documentary evidence remains about the circumstances of Roesen’s coming to America. German-born, perhaps in Cologne, Roesen became one of the most prolific specialists of decorative so-called “dining-room” pictures of fruits and flowers. This painting is typical of his signature style, including standard elements like the marble tabletop and even the repeatable arrangement of flowers in a cut-glass goblet, crowned by the white calla lily. Like his predecessor, Johann Wilhelm Preyer (1803-1889), another immigrant from Germany who brought with him the hard-edged illusionism of the Düsseldorf school, Roesen made innumerable repetitions of similar fruits and flowers, arranging and rearranging their constituent parts. These impossible juxtapositions of flora and fruit (in reality, they were never in season at the same time) were interpreted in the 19th century as symbols of God’s bounty in the new world.

- Ridley-Tree Reopening, 2021