Johann Heinrich Roos
German, 1631-1685
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Johann Heinrich Roos was a German Baroque era landscape painter and etcher.
His family had emigrated to Amsterdam due to the Thirty Years' War in 1640. He trained with Guilliam du Gardijn, Cornelis de Bie and Barent Graat, but the landscape painters Nicolaes Berchem and Karel Dujardin were more of an influence on him. In 1653 the Roos family returned to Germany, where Johann and his brother Theodor Roos worked 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 1623–1693), 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. Due to unsatisfactory working conditions, he moved with his family to Frankfurt in 1667 and was very successful, but lost everything in a fire in 1685. He died trying to save his belongings. Four sons and a daughter survived to become good painters.
Though not registered as a pupil of Rembrandt, he made a copy of a painting by Rembrandt that he saw presumably in Amsterdam while he trained there from 1647 to 1653:
