NEW YORK – Immigrating to the United States in the 1850s to escape the revolutions in his native European country, Prussian American artist Severin Roesen (1816-1872) excelled at still lifes and attracted a strong following.
Shortly after arriving in New York, he began exhibiting in galleries. After relocating to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1863, he found eager clients among the business tycoons who were developing the area, and their fortunes, by harnessing its natural resources.
Inspired by the still life masters from a few centuries before, Roesen painted in a highly realistic manner that showed nature’s bounty as well as symbols of the successes available to those in the New World.
Combining the two most common subjects in still lifes – flowers and fruit – is an 1850 Roesen that attained a whopping $240,000 plus the buyer’s premium in May 2022 at Heritage Auctions. Roesen created a dramatic vertical composition that played up the structural nature of each item in the painting.
The hefty price for this early work, which is the only six-figure sum on the LiveAuctioneers platform for the artist, is attributable in part to its unusual details, such as the shadowy forest landscape that serves as the backdrop. Roesen more commonly used this feature in his mature works.
“The floral still life is arranged in a garden urn set atop a richly veined black-marble table top, which would have signified affluence to a nineteenth-century audience. Surrounding its base is an abundance of fruit piled so high as to almost obscure the vessel entirely, including an exotic pineapple on the left and a watermelon on the right, a combination seen rarely in Roesen’s still lifes,” according to the auctioneer’s catalog description for this painting. Roesen’s audience would have understood the pineapple as an emblem of prosperity as well as hospitality.
“Collectors gravitate to highly realistic still lifes because they speak to a classical aesthetic, and the skill with which they are executed is fantastic,” said Andrew K. Holter, president of Nye & Company in Bloomfield, New Jersey. “The light, texture, and color Roesen uses instantly transports the viewer and conjures up such a realistic sense of standing in front of a floral arrangement or marble-top table full of bountiful fruits and sparkling wine.”
Roesen’s most sought-after paintings are those that show the greatest abundance of flowers and fruit, Holter said, adding, “It is this abundance that signifies to the viewer that the owner is successful and has a bounty of riches, which can afford the most opulent spreads of food or the most exotic flower arrangements.”
In one such example, Roesen separated his two most favored subjects into a pair of still lifes, one showcasing flowers and the other fruit. Together, they earned $42,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Brunk Auctions in September 2020.
The Severin Roesen market has softened following its heyday in the 1990s and early 2000s, but the artist still has a devoted group of collectors who actively seek his work. Festooned with fresh flowers ranging from lilies to peonies is a circa-1870 Severin Roesen still life that sold within its $30,000-$50,000 estimate, bringing $47,500 plus the buyer’s premium in October 2023 at Freeman’s Hindman. Roesen produced more fruit-themed still lifes than florals, and he included at least some fruit in all his paintings. He was also lauded for the variety of flowers featured in his works, which he painted so accurately that the blooms are easily identifiable.
“Roesen has a terrific ability to capture light, texture, and surface in his compositions, and it is his works that bring all those aspects together to produce a still life reminiscent of the great Dutch Old Masters that excite collectors. Buyers tend to be Americans who collect furniture and decorations from the late Federal through the Neoclassical period,” Holter said.
The appeal of a Roesen is straightforward and uncomplicated, which is another aspect that delights his fans. “His works are masterfully executed, realistically rendered, and connote success,” Holter said. “They are a more modern interpretation of what you might expect to see in one of the grand English country houses from the 17th through the 19th century, and they are representative of a life the collector aspires to achieve, or as a symbol of success that they have achieved.”
Roesen enjoyed adding elements to his still lifes that were symbols of home and family, such as a bird’s nest. He depicted one containing three eggs in a work that made $35,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Nye & Company in September 2023. “The success seen in the sale of this particular painting is a reflection of what it portrays to the collector,” Holter said. “Not only is it a beautifully rendered floral still life with a bird’s nest and eggs, it serves as a symbol for success, new beginnings, and the promise of a long and fruitful life. If you put this in context with our then-relatively new nation, Roesen manages to both capture and exude the confidence of our country and the success of the collector.”
Besides flowers and fruit, his still lifes also include symbols of vanitas, such as glassware or a wine bottle. A different Roesen still life Nye & Company offered in October 2021 that had a champagne flute and a bird’s nest made $30,000 plus the buyer’s premium. “Much like the previous painting, we see a continuation of themes with the bird’s nest and eggs, which symbolize new beginnings or a rebirth, and a cornucopia of fruits and spirits, which symbolize abundance and success,” Holter said.
Explaining the allure of this Roesen still life, he went on to say, “In addition to being a terrific painting, it is the equivalent of having a Ferrari sitting in your driveway. When you walk into a home and see a Roesen on the wall or a Ferrari in the driveway, one cannot help but immediately think of success.”
Still lifes were famously disparaged in the past. In the 17th century, the French Academy codified a hierarchy of subjects for paintings that literally ranked still lifes last, behind history paintings, portraits, genre paintings, and landscapes. But those who cherish Roesen’s work know that the French were, frankly, wrong. His admirers understand the daunting level of skill needed to relay the fleeting pleasures of ripe fruit and full blooms in an era before photography could freeze them forever.
Indeed, the fact that people are still reveling in his still lifes more than 150 years after his death proves their power. In lesser hands, an arrangement of fruit and flowers becomes nothing more than a pile of stuff that will soon go bad. In Roesen’s hands, it brims with life, color, and luminosity. His talent ensured that his still lifes did not die with the Victorian audiences they were originally painted for. By imbuing his works with symbols and meanings as copious and as juicy as his subjects, he made them timeless.