1. Denman Waldo Ross was an American painter, art collector, and scholar of art history and theory.
17 Facts About Denman Ross
1. 2.
Denman Ross was a lecturer on art and design at Harvard University and a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
3.
Denman Ross had two older siblings who died before he was born.
4.
Denman Ross was enrolled at an elementary school in Newton Corner.
5.
When his father's business took the family to New York City in 1862, Denman Ross was tutored at home by his cousin Louise Nathurst, who was seven years his senior.
6.
Denman Ross's father bought a house at 24 Craigie St, a few blocks from the school, and Denman lived at home.
7.
Denman Ross studied history with Henry Adams and received a bachelor's degree in 1875, graduating with honors in history and election to Phi Beta Kappa.
8.
Denman Ross resumed his studies at Harvard as a post-graduate in the fall of 1876.
9.
Denman Ross came to be interested in art soon after this, and began teaching courses in design and art theory at Harvard by 1889.
10.
Denman Ross would spend much of the rest of his life lecturing on these and related topics, working with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on their burgeoning Oriental Art department, and traveling the world in search of artworks to add to his personal collection.
11.
Denman Ross was a member of some of Boston's elite inner circles, and is known to have brushed elbows not only with other prominent people associated with the Museum of Fine Arts and the art world, but with the likes of Louis Brandeis, John Singer Sargent, Joseph Lindon Smith, Isabella Stewart Gardner and various members of Boston's most prominent families.
12.
Denman Ross collected a myriad of European art objects, along with a great many Chinese and Japanese paintings and textiles.
13.
Denman Ross spent two years planning a residential hotel; the Hotel Ludlow, christened with his father's middle name, opened in 1889.
14.
On September 12,1935, Ross died at the Savoy Hotel in London of a cerebral hemorrhage that he had suffered three days earlier; he and his assistant Arthur E Brown had been in Europe for several months.
15.
Denman Ross was cremated and his ashes were placed in a Tang dynasty burial urn, a gift from Messrs.
16.
Denman Ross's ashes were returned to Cambridge and interred in the family plot in Mount Auburn Cemetery.
17.
Over a span of forty years, Denman Ross donated over eleven thousand items to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and nine thousand items to the Fogg Museum at Harvard.