Rosengarteu.] tv«'^ [Nov. 1, 



as a man and as an arlist is one that will long be dear to all who knew 

 and loved him. 



The Rothermels came originally from Germany by way of Holland, 

 the first American of the name reaching Pennsylvania in 1703. His de- 

 scendants settled in the romantic valley of the Wyoming, where the 

 future artist was born. He in turn became the father of three children — 

 one son is a successful member of the Philadelphia Bar. Tlie country 

 home of Rothermel was the scene of his quiet old age, where his friends, 

 young and old, enjoyed his pleasant reminiscences of his long and active 

 life, of his meeting with the great artists abroad and at home, and his 

 genial and kindly encouragement to the younger artists was always gen- 

 erously given. His visits to the city and to the Academy of Fine Arts 

 and other gathering places of artists were always the occasion of hearty 

 greetings and he modestly received the praise of his numerous admirers. 



His family have a short autobiographical memoir in which Mr. 

 Rothermel makes due acknowledgment of his earliest friends, among 

 them Col. Cephas Gr. Childs, himself an engraver of excellent taste 

 and discernment, and Prof. J. J. Mapes, of New York, and in Philadel- 

 phia, the Messrs. Edward and Henry C. Carey, James L. Claghorn, 

 Henry C. Gibson, and others, gave him valuable and substantial 

 recognition by commissions which enabled him to go abroad and 

 perfect himself in the great foreign art schools and galleries. He 

 speaks in terms of generous praise of Leutze and Frankenstein, 

 and in the warmest admiration of Thomas Sully, the leading 

 painter of female heads in this country after Gilbert Stuart, who was 

 passing off the stage as Sully came on it. His skill, grace, color, gave 

 his portraits of women a beauty q'jite his own, and some of his portraits 

 of men are of a high order of excellence, but most of all Rothermel dwells 

 on Sully's charm of manner, his genial nature, his sympathy for young 

 artists, and the beautiful old age spent in the house and the studio that 

 was one of the landmarks of the city, just across the 'way from the 

 rooms of the American Philosophical Society, where there are excellent 

 examples of his work. 



Mr. Rothermel, like the late Mr. Lambdin, was elected a Director of 

 the Academy of Fine Arts in recognition of his excellence as a man, as 

 well as his distinction as an artist, and he worked hard for the establish- 

 ment of the schools that contribute so much to the value and importance 

 of the Academy. On its walls hang some of his early and some of his 

 best pictures. He himself says that in one of them he introduced copies 

 of the original casts of the persons figuring in his historical portraits, and 

 justifies this as far better than the fashion set by Cornelius and other 

 German artists of copying largely from Raphael as an evidence of admira- 

 tion. As Chairman of the Committee on Education of the Academy he 

 labored hard to elevate the standard of its schools and with substantial 

 success. He suggested the purchase of copies of casts of the best exam- 

 ples of Greek and Roman sculpture, for the use of the antique school, 



