Ruth Starr Rose

Ruth Starr Rose (1887–1965) was an American artist. She was a painter, lithographer and serigrapher, and best known for her paintings of African American life in Maryland in the 1930s and 1940s.[1][2]

Ruth Starr Rose
Born
Ruth Starr

1887
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, U.S.
Died1965
Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationVassar College
Art Students League of New York
Known forPainting
MovementModern Painting
Spouse(s)William Searls Rose
AwardsMary Hills Goodwin Prize

This important woman artist's work has toured throughout Maryland, the United States, and Europe as a unique example of an early American Shared Community expressed through pigment and paint. Additionally, Rose is credited as the first white artist to create a work of art for a black church. The subject of her fresco, Pharaoh's Army Got Drownded, was to honor the minister's son who perished in training for WWII.

Early life and education

Rose was born in 1887 into an affluent family in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.[3][4] Her family were active abolitionists; her paternal grandfather was William Starr, a timber businessman who had been placed under house arrest by U.S. Marshals for his refusal to comply with the fugitive slave laws.[5][6] On her paternal side she was descended from Dr. Comfort Starr (1589–1659), one of the founders of Harvard College.[7] Her mother was Ida May Hill Starr, an author and musician.[5][4] Nathan Comfort Starr (1896–1981) a Medieval literature professor, was her brother, and her sister-in-law (married to Nathan) was photographer and art historian, Nina Howell Starr.[8][9]

The family moved to Maryland's Eastern Shore to Hope House after the turn of the century, in 1906.[5] Hope House was in the Tilghman and Lloyd families and existed as a plantation, before the Starr family moved in.[10] In 1907, the Starr family remodeled the home.[10] The family lived differently than their neighbors, in a racially integrated community where they socialized with their African American neighbors and friends.[5]

In Maryland, she and her mother attended the African American DeShields United Methodist Church in Copperville, Maryland. Many years later, Rose painted a mural of the biblical story of Moses parting the Red Sea in this same church titled, And the Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned (1940) and it served as a metaphor for breaking away from slavery.[11] Nearby towns of Unionville and Copperville were African American communities, and often where Rose would spend time and paint her subjects.[12] Rose was an art activist, and it was her familiarity with town residents that allowed her a glimpse into the African American experience.[13][14][15]

She left Hope House, the family property, to study, just as her mother had, at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.[4] After graduation from Vassar, she enrolled in the Art Students League of New York where she worked with artist Victoria Hutson Huntley, Mabel Dwight, Harry Sternberg, and George C. Miller.[8]

Career and works

Rose focused her paintings on African American life on the Chesapeake Bay. Rose and her family had long supported civil rights for African American people and they were well connected with black artists and performers, including Paul Robeson, Lead Belly, and Roland Hayes. Rose's subjects included local descendants of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Ross Tubman, a professional sail maker, female crab pickers, and heroic WWII veterans. She portrayed her friends with "dignity and compassion" which was rare in portrayals of people of color during that era.[16]

In 1937, when she was living in Caldwell, New Jersey, she was awarded the Mary Hills Goodwin Prize at the exhibition of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York City for her painting "The Twilight Quartet," a portrait of four African American musicians from the historic settlement of Copperville, Maryland.[17] In 1957 she was awarded a prize in the graphics category at the exhibition of the National Association of Women Artists.[18]

Rose had a deep regard for African American spirituals. As early as 1956, she was credited by Howard University's Professor James A. Porter, the father of African American art history, for her representation of African American spirituals which he commended her for as being the most compassionate and complete to date. Her ear was moved by their dissonant beauty, and she created illustrations of the songs reflecting how members of her congregation felt as they sang the melodies. Alain LeRoy Locke selected two of her African American spirituals for his pioneering work, The Negro in Art in 1940.[19] Her biographers, Barbara Paca and Nina Khrushcheva, have connected her writing and depiction of African American spirituals to the earliest foundation of African American religion in the United States.

Ruth Starr Rose's works have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, and throughout Europe. She was included in the 1947 and the 1951 Dallas Museum of Fine Arts exhibitions of the National Serigraph Society.[20][21]

Personal

In 1914, Rose married William Searls Rose, who was from a wealthy family.[22][5] They lived near New York City and adopted two children.[5] They spent summers at Hope House and at the adjoining farm, Pickbourne, which had been given to Rose as a wedding gift.[23][5]

Harlem Renaissance artist Prentiss Taylor and Weyhe Gallery's Carl Zigrosser, founder of the Prints Department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, were her lifelong friends and mentors.

References
  1. Ruth Starr Rose Smithsonian American Art Museum, accessed April 8, 2016
  2. Before 'Black Lives Matter,' there was Ruth Starr Rose The Washington Post, October 6, 2015
  3. "Ruth Starr Rose". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  4. "Ruth Starr Rose: Illuminating African American Life in 1930-'40s Maryland". Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly. 2016. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  5. Souza, Gabriella (2015-11-17). "Her Own Brush". Baltimore magazine. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  6. Lauren, Melissa (2016-03-04). "Faces of the Arts: Ruth Starr Rose— An activist through art, she explored Maryland's cultural and historical diversity". What's Up? Media. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  7. "Eau Claire Girl Married in East, Elaborate Story of Wedding Ruth Starr Told in Eastern Paper". Leader-Telegram. Star Democrat of Easton, MD. 1914-06-23. p. 5. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  8. Lewis, C.S. (2007). Hooper, Walter (ed.). The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, Harper San Francisco. pp. 121, 513. ISBN 9780060819224.
  9. "Obituary; Nathan C. Starr, 84, former Williams dean". The Transcript of North Adams, Massachusetts. 1981-02-16. p. 12. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  10. Michael Bourne and Cynthia Ludlow (1977). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Hope House" (PDF). Maryland Historical Trust. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  11. "Deshields M.E. Chapel (Deshields U.M. Church)" (PDF). Maryland Historical Trust, State of Maryland. 2004-04-05. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  12. "The "Socialite" Whose Art Celebrates the Life of Eastern Shore African Americans Back in the Day". Secrets of the Eastern Shore. 2016-01-17. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  13. Lewis Museum presents Ruth Starr Rose's prints and paintings of her African American Eastern Shore neighbors Baltimore Sun Times, January 6, 2016
  14. Ruth Starr Rose: Illuminating African American Life in 1930-'40s Maryland Vassar Quarterly, Winter 2016, Volume 112, Issue 1
  15. McCabe, Bret (January 27, 2016). "Lewis Museum presents Ruth Starr Rose's prints and paintings of her African American Eastern Shore neighbors". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2020-05-09.
  16. Barbara Paca, Ruth Starr Rose (1887-1965): Revelations of African American Life in Maryland and the World, 2015
  17. 13 Prizes Awarded at Women's Art Show The New York Times, January 26, 1937
  18. Art: A Game of Styles: Offerings from Abstract to Realist Are Displayed in National Women's Show The New York Times, May 9, 2957
  19. Ruth Starr Rose (1896-1965): Revelations of African American Life in Maryland and the World by Barbara Paca and Nina Khrushcheva; 1st edition (October 1, 2015), intro, ISBN 978-0996687904
  20. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1947). "National Serigraph Exhibition, January 15–February 15, 1947 [Checklist]". The Portal to Texas History. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  21. Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (1951). "National Serigraph Society Exhibition, April 1–May 2, 1951 [Checklist]". The Portal to Texas History. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  22. "Eau Claire Girl Married in East". Eau Claire Leader. June 23, 1914. p. 5. Retrieved July 1, 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. Ruth Starr Rose is dead: Artist and lithographer The New York Times, October 26, 1965
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