Artwork of the Day!! Wed, Feb 8, 2023 is by James Mahlon Rosen (1933-2023): "Homage to Vermeer", oil and wax emulsion; ca 1975, 20 x 20". POR.

American?painter James Mahlon Rosen (1933-2023). R.I.P.!!!

Artwork of the Day!! Wednesday, February 8, 2023 is by American painter James Mahlon Rosen (1933-2023).

"Homage to Vermeer" is a painting on stretched linen canvas, done around 1975 by American Minimalist painter, teacher, and?epistoler James Mahlon Rosen (1933-2023) who passed over on February 5, 2023. The image and canvas measure 20 x 20 inches and is unsigned, not unusual for the time. It was painted by the artist on a gray linen canvas using wax emulsions that were applied using a brush and rollers. This painting from from the collection of now deceased Santa Rosa, California collectors Robert and Evelyn McAleece. The gallery inventory number for this work is 17617. Spend a few minutes looking, you may be surprised. As you may surmise, to accurately photograph and digitize this work for all the various monitors used for the internet is impossible, but we have made an attempt (at least using our monitors here at the gallery.)

?This early career painting by James Mahlon Rosen (1933-2023) is available from the gallery, but in defernce to Jim's personal views, I have not published the price which is available through contacting the gallery.

For those who might have an interest I will follow this post with a brief series of comments regarding Jim, from my extremely biased position.

Contact the gallery with any condition or other questions. Shipping costs will be discussed, the surface is fragile and requires special packing. California residents will have sales tax added. Out of state residents may be responsible for use tax, depending on state law.

James M. Rosen pays homage to the Old Masters with this "Homage to Vermeer", in this instance Vermeer's "The Art of Painting" (also called "Painter in his Studio"). He distills the moment to its essence, using transluscent oil and wax emulsion washes that soften the planes and lend a glow to the composition. The details of the figures - their faces, hands, and the textures of their clothes - are left to the imagination of the viewer.The subject of this composition has long inspired countless artists, trained and untrained, over the centuries. Rosen uses his signature style to obscure the definite and reduce the composition to just "light", inviting the viewer to meditate on the work. For many, the more time spent with a Rosen painting, the more the content comes into focus, but the viewer has to be involved.

San Francisco critic Thomas Albright commented about his work on pages 226-7 of 'Art in the San Francsico Bay Area 1945 - 1980':

"James Rosen's painting of the late 1970s...were uniquely luminous abstractions of natural forms that approached the vanishing point of minimalist field painting. He used [paint] to translate the highlights and shadows...into the sparest of gray and beige washes, and oils to reduce them further to greater or lesser concentrations of light on grounds that were virtually identical in hue and value.

"Rosen later explored other areas of subject matter...figurative images derived from the painting of the early Renaissance masters. Fragmented, tenuous, and yet persistent, these ghost-like icons projected great poignancy."

James Mahlon Rosen was born December 3, 1933 in Detroit, Michigan. He credits early exposure to art at the Detroit Institute of Arts with kindling his desire to draw and paint. After graduating high school he took courses at Cooper Union under Nicholas Mariscano, then completed his degrees at Wayne State University and Cranbrook Academy of Arts. Over time he developed an oil and wax emulsion technique that allowed him to layer colors in a transluscent manner, with some of his works resembling watercolors. These he would paint over with monotonal hues he called "veils", so that the works can be "completed by the observer". In an interview with the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, June 4, 2011, he notes that he uses the Aristotelian term "entelechy" - "to hold something back", as inspiration for this technique.

Rosen was a professor of art history and painting at the University of Hawaii, University of California at Berkeley, Santa Rosa Junior College, and Augusta College where he was the William S. Morris Eminent Scholar in Art. He has been Artist/Critic with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Selected solo exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, St. Louis University, 2010 (retrospective); Gallery Paul Anglim, San Francisco (2003); Timken Art Museum, San Diego (1991); Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Italy (1986); Betty Parsons Gallery, New York (1980); The Annex Galleries, Santa Rosa (1980). Group exhibitions include: Gallery Artists, Mary Pauline Gallery, Georgia (2006); Homage to Betty Parsons, New York (1999); Newfoundland Drawings, Baird Gallery, Canada (1999); Faculty Exhibition, Museum of American Art, Philidelphia (1998); Southern Drawl, Montgomery Museum, Alabama (1997); On the Edge, Rosa Esman Gallery, New York (1990); American Watercolors, San Diego Museum of Art (1983); Spring Penthouse Show, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1973).

James Mahlon Rosen died in New York on February 5, 2023.

A personal note:

I learned yesterday that an old former friend, James Mahlon Rosen passed over on Sunday, February 5, 2023 in New York. I learned this through a Facebook post by his son Jeremy. I feel a personal need to comment. Jim and I had a complicated relationship, not unusual for Jim, who I always considered a, at least partial, reincarnation of painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, whose friends also would have fallings out.

We met in Santa Rosa where I began framing his paintings, at that time stretched with an arch at the top. That led to a couple of shows at the Annex Galleries of his work and, in 1980, a cooperative show with the Betty Parsons Gallery, who represented him in New York. They showed the oils and I showed the works on paper.

We spent many hours bellying up to the bar after 5 p.m. at some local hangouts, discussing art and philosophy, Jim constantly drawing witty cartoons on cocktail napkins (I have a collection of them). There were the notes and letters, often a couple a week, all with drawings or watercolors throughout the tiny text, all written with his unique calligraphic twist and his equally unique, intelligent, and sometimes tortured take on the world.

During the 1980s and 1990s I began to focus my attention in the gallery on printmaking, a medium Jim deplored and our views began to diverge, ultimately to the point where we no longer communicated. Enough of that, others will have other stories; he affected many - colleagues and students.

I have not let that schism diminish my admiration for the man as an artist, I have grown to enjoy the doodles to the large works and the hundreds of watercolors. He has made me look, and has made me think about what I am seeing. I am honored to have known Jim. I hope he has finally found the peace he has sought.

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