Hermann Rosse studied at the Academy of Art in
The Hague and trained in architecture and design at the Delft Polytechnic School and the South Kensington College of Art in London. From 1908 to 1910 he attended
Stanford University in California, earned his B.A. in architecture, and designed several residences. He spent much of the summer in 1909 at the nearby art colony of
Carmel-by-the-Sea and contributed his paintings to the Third Annual Exhibition of the Carmel Arts & Crafts Club. From 1911 to 1913 he produced most of the decorative interior designs – including paintings, stained glass, tiles, and marquetry – for the
Peace Palace at
The Hague; and while working there he met his future wife, Sophia Helena Luyt (1891–1982), a landscape architect who was responsible for the design of the formal gardens. After their marriage in London on 14 June 1913, they moved to
Palo Alto, California, where Rosse was commissioned to design decorations for the Netherlands pavilion at the 1915
Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. He received a medal of honor for this commission. In 1914 he became an exhibiting member of the exclusive San Francisco Sketch Club. The many exhibitions of his watercolors, murals, and theatrical models at private and public art galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Palace of Fine Arts,
San Francisco Art Association and Oakland Art Gallery, consistently received glowing reviews. Rosse designed sets for the Forest Theatre in Carmel, Art Theatre of Palo Alto, and The Playhouse in Santa Barbara. In April 1919 his work was included in the highly popular Exhibition of American Stage Designs at the Bourgeois Galleries in New York City, along with contributions by Macgowan, the incomparable
James Blanding Sloan,
Robert Edmond Jones,
Norman Bel Geddes,
Joseph Urban, and many others. This exhibition traveled across the United States and closed at the
University of California, Berkeley. His 1921 solo exhibition at the Arden Galleries in New York City received rave reviews. Also, in 1921, Rosse provided stunning illustrations for Ben Hecht's column in the
Chicago Daily News; These were collected into a book titled,
1001 Afternoons in Chicago, which also featured Rosse's strikingly bold pen drawings. In 1923 Rosse moved with his family to New City in
Rockland County, New York. He was already familiar with the New York theatre world, and now became more closely involved with drama, vaudeville, musicals, and even symphony orchestras. He created the sets for the
Ziegfeld Follies (1922),
Casanova and
The Swan (1923), Gershwin's
Rhapsody in Blue (1926),
The Great Magoo (1932), and
Ulysses in Nighttown (1958); he authored and co-authored several publications and even designed a movie theatre where audiences could sit on either side of a gigantic screen. Rosse worked in theatre in London and the Netherlands, taught as the Professor of Decorative Art at the Technische Hoogeschool in Delft, and designed Dutch pavilions at world's fairs in Brussels, Paris, and New York. He also created plans for subdivisions in several Dutch cities. In 1948 Rosse was appointed Resident Stage designer at the
Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. He worked there for a dozen years, while also editing
Chapter One, the newsletter of the Greater New York chapter of the
American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA). In 1949, he won a competition to design the
Tony Award, the silver prototype of which is in the Chapin Library. Rosse died in Nyack, New York in April 1965. Since 1988 members of the Rosse family have donated books, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, prints, plans, photographs, documents, and memorabilia concerning the work of Herman and Helena Rosse to Chapin Library, Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts (USA). ==Filmography==