Background

Denman Waldo Ross was the youngest of the three children of John Ludlow and Frances Walker (Waldo) Ross, and the only one to survive infancy. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, his grandparents, Ogden and Lydia Ludlow Ross, both of Scottish descent, having moved there from New Jersey; later they returned to the E.

Education

Denman received his elementary education in New York, largely from private tutors, and entered Harvard at the age of eighteen. In 1880 he received the degrees of M. A. and Ph. D. His thesis being published under the title The Early History of Land-Holding among the Germans (1883)

Career

His parents removed to Cambridge and acquired a large house, 24 Craigie Street, which remained his residence throughout life. Ross went to Cambridge to work under Henry Adams. After the death in 1884 of his father, who, it is said, was opposed to his son's entering the field of art, Ross abandoned his work in history. In 1899 Nathaniel Shaler induced him to teach at the Harvard Summer School, and that fall, two years after Norton's retirement, President Charles W. Eliot appointed him lecturer on the theory of design in the architectural department; not until the retirement of Charles Herbert Moore, 1909, who did not regard Ross's theories with favor, did he become a member of the fine arts department at the Fogg Art Museum.

His theories were first set forth in a paper, "Design as a Science, " submitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Proceedings, vol. XXXVI, 1901), of which he had been elected a fellow in 1885. This he developed ultimately into A Theory of Pure Design, published in 1907, some years before the birth of "abstract" painting. His undergraduate teaching deeply influenced some who subsequently became painters or museum curators and directors; but his precise and clear-cut formul', illustrated by original works of art brought to the classroom, furnished sound theory and inspiration to countless schoolteachers who flocked year after year to his summer courses.

In 1915 he was appointed chairman of an advisory committee on drawing and design for the Boston public schools. He cut at the root of Ruskinian vagueness and, being a practitioner, brought Nortonian esthetics to earth. Although he had studied while a student in Paris at Julian's, he followed the Impressionism of Monet, Manet, and Degas, and remained faithful to their precepts to the end of his life. His precise "set-palettes, " which might have been suggested by Whistler's limited scales, were a rationalization of their practices. Exhibitions of his fresh, objective, passionless, experimental and often rather abstract work (curiously he had no sympathy for Postimpressionism) were held at the St. Botolph Club, Boston, 1898, the Boston Art Club, 1922, at the Century Club in New York the following year (for which he prepared a brochure, Experiments in Drawing and Painting), and on numerous occasions at the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge. Among his portraits that of George Santayana at Harvard is a typical example.

His work, which later in life was conditioned by preoccupation with "dynamic symmetry" and other geometric formul', is represented at Fenway Court, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by a dozen canvases, and by hundreds of sketches in the Ross Collection at the Fogg Museum. It was as a collector that he made his greatest contribution. To illustrate abstract principles of order he ventured into the then less familiar fields of Oriental art. He was an inveterate traveler. After his mother's death in 1904 he spent much time in India, Cambodia, China, Japan, Mexico, and Peru.

He was one of the company of Bostonians--Ernest F. Fenollosa, Edward Sylvester Morse, Dr. Charles Goddard Weld, and Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow--who made the Boston Museum the most important repository of Oriental art in the Western world. He was for over forty years a trustee of that institution. On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, nine galleries were set apart for the display of some of the 11, 000 objects he had given since 1906. To the Fogg Museum at Harvard he added 1, 500 works of art. His contempt for the historical and archeological point of view--as a trained historian--was a curious contradiction.

He lived simply, carefully, and elegantly; order and calmness pervaded his home. He never married. His close friend, Louis Brandeis, managed, until he became justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Ross's financial and business affairs. He built and owned the Hotel Ludlow, near Copley Square. His intimates outside the university circle included the painters Charles Hopkinson, Dodge Macknight, and Joseph Lindon Smith. He was a member of the Boston Society of Architects, Boston Architectural Club, honorary fellow and honorary keeper of the Ross Study Series at the Fogg Museum, honorary vice-president of the Indian Society (London), and corresponding member of the Gesellschaft fer Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin.

His guiding principle may be summed up in his oft-repeated injunction: "Strive for Order and hope for Beauty. " He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London when he was in his eighty-third year. His works, other than those cited above, include Notes on the Word "Villa" in Lex Salica and Other Early German Sources (1877); Studies in Mediaeval History, I. The Mark and the Manor (1879); Nature of Allodial Property among the Early Germans (1880); Studies in the Early History of Institutions (1880); Theory of Primitive Communism (1881); "On the Capitalization of Land in Early Society" (Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. XXI, 1886); Illustrations of Balance and Rhythm (1900); "The Arts and Crafts, a Diagnosis" (Handicraft, January 1903); "Address on Design; Its Importance in Life" (Rhode Island School of Design. Public Exercises at the Dedication of the Memorial Hall, the 24th of November, 1903); "The Teaching of Art" (National Education Association, Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, 1903); The Painter's Palette (1919); "An Example of Cambodian Sculpture" (Fogg Art Museum Notes, June 1922); "Drawings by Howard Giles" (Ibid. , June 1926); and "Hervey E. Wetzel, " (Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum, November 1931).

Achievements

• Ross was one of the leading figures of his generation in the field of fine arts. His works "A Theory of Pure Design: Harmony, Balance, Rhythm" (1907) and "On Drawing and Painting" (1912) were the best of his theoretical writings. Ross donated the collection of objects to the Museum of Fine Arts. He collected a myriad of European art objects, along with a great many Chinese and Japanese paintings and textiles. Among the many objects in the Denman Waldo Ross collection at the Museum are a stone head from Angkor Wat, a set of ukiyo-e folding screen paintings of Kyoto's pleasure quarters, and a number of Chinese Buddhist steles and paintings.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A theory of pure designharmony, balance, rhythm

    (Pages 212 It is the reproduction of the old book publishe...)

  • The Early History of Land-Holding Among the Germans

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Studies in the Early History of Institutions, Volume 3

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Painters Palette: A Theory of Tone Relations, an Instrument of Expression (Classic Reprint)

    (In taking up the practice of painting, it is a question w...)

  • On Drawing and Painting (Classic Reprint)

    (In presenting this book to the public I want to say, at o...)

  • Studies in the Early History of Institutions: The Theory of Primitive Democracy in the Alps

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • The Painter's Palette first edition

  • book

  • A theory of pure design; harmony, balance, rhythm

Membership

Member of the Boston Society of Architects

Member of the Boston Architectural Club

Fellow of the Ross Study Series at the Fogg Museum

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "He recognized excellence wherever he found it, and at once, even in an art which was quite new to him" (Laurence Binyon, The Times, Sept. 21, 1935)

Connections

Father:

John Ludlow Ross

Mother:

Frances Walker (Waldo) Ross

grandmother:

Lydia Ludlow Ross

Grandfather:

Ogden Ludlow Ross

Friend:

Louis Brandeis