I:)'; 



RUISCH, RACHEL. 



RUMOHR, CARL PRIEDRICIT, VON. 



193 



cunda in Callimachunx et Apollonium Rhodium' (Leyden, 1751); 

 ' Oratio de Doctore Umbratico,' 1753, 4 to; 'Dissertatio de Vita et 

 Scriptis Longini,' 1766, 4to; (reprinted in Toup's edition of Longinus). 

 These discourses and essays were collected and published by Ruhnken 

 himself in 1797, in 2 vols., under the title 'Ruhnkenii Opuscula 

 Oratoria, Philologica, Critica, nunc primum conjunctim edita.' A new 

 edition, with some additional dissertations, was edited by Bergmann, 

 in 2 vols., Leyden, 1823. Some parts of the correspondence of Ruhn- 

 ken with his learned friends have likewise been published. J. A. H. 

 Tittmann has edited 'Ruhnkenii, Valckeuarii, et aliorum ad J. A. 

 Ernesti Epistolse ; accedunt Ruhnkenii Observations in Callimachum," 

 &c., Leipzig, 1812. Mahne has edited 'Ruhnkenii et Valckenarii 

 Epistolse mutuse,' Vliessingen, 1832, and ' Ruhukenii Epistolss ad 

 Diversos,' Vliessingen, 1834. 



RUISCH, RACHEL, a distinguished Dutch flower-painter, was born 

 at Amsterdam in 1664 : she was the daughter of Professor Ruisch, 

 who had her taught flower-painting by Wilhelm Van Deist. In 1695 

 she was married to the portrait-painter Juriaen Pool, who was two years 

 her junior, to whom she bore ten children and with whom she lived 

 fifty years. In 1701 she and her husband were elected members of 

 the Society of Painters of the Hague, and in 1708 John William 

 elector of the Pfalz, appointed her his court painter. She died at 

 Amsterdam in 1750, aged eighty-six, and she continued to paint till 

 she was upwards of eighty years old. Her works have been compared 

 with those of Van Huysum and De Heem, and have sometimes been 

 sold for very high prices, even 8,500 francs for a single picture. 



(Van Qool, Nieuwe Schoubwg dcr Nedcrlanische Kunstschilders, &c. ; 

 Van Eyuden and Vander Willigen, Geschiedenis der Vaderlandsche 

 Schilderkunst, &c.) 



RUMFORD, BENJAMIN, COUNT, was born at Woburn, Massa- 

 chusetts, on the 28th of March 1752. His family name was 

 Thompson. For awhile a merchant's clerk, he turned to the study of 

 medicine, then became a tutor, and eventually a schoolmaster at 

 Rumford (now Concord) in New Hampshire. Released by his 

 marriage with a young and wealthy widow from the necessity of 

 acting as a teacher, he turned to scientific pursuits ; but when the 

 revolution commenced he became a major of militia, and for his services 

 to the king's cause obtained an appointment in the Foreign Office. 

 During the contest he returned to New York, and raised a regiment 

 of dragoons, of which he was appointed colonel. In 1784 he returned 

 to England, was knighted, and is said for some time to have acted as 

 one of the under-secretaries of state. He subsequently entered the 

 service of the King of Bavaria, and rose rapidly to a high position in 

 the state. He is said to have accomplished many social improvements, 

 amongst which were plans for the suppression of mendicity and for 

 relieving poverty and elevating the poor ; besides various civil and 

 military reforms, for which several orders of knighthood were con- 

 ferred upon him, and he was made a lieutenant-general and created a 

 count. From the time when he was compelled to leave America he had 

 been sepai-ated from his wife and child ; but he took for his title the 

 name of her native town, which was also the birthplace of his child, 

 who now (in her twentieth year) joined him on the death of her 

 mother. Towards the close of the century he once more came to 

 England, and devoted his time to experiments on the nature and 

 economical application of heat, and assisted in founding the Royal 

 Institution. In 1802 he went to reside at Paris, and married the 

 widow of Lavoisier, the chemist, but soon afterwards separated from 

 her. He then retired to Auteuil, a village near Paris, and, having a 

 handsome pension from the King of Bavaria, devoted his time to 

 rural pursuits and to chemistry and natural philosophy. He died on 

 the 21st of August 1814. 



The plans of Count Rumford for improving the arts and conve- 

 niences of domestic life have rendered his name well known in 

 England. An account of these will be found in his ' Essays, Political 

 Economical, and Philosophical.' Several of these essays were pub- 

 lished separately, and effected much good at a time when the 

 amelioration of the condition of the poor was attracting great atten- 

 tion. His views are enlightened as well as benevolent, and on the 

 whole he appears to have been in advance of his time. Two volumes 

 of the ' Essays ' were collected and published in 1798, and a third in 

 1802. In the latter year also was published a volume of 'Papers on 

 Natural Philosophy and Mechanics.' Some of these had been read 

 before the Royal Society, in whose ' Transactions ' they are also 

 printed. 



RUMIANTSOV. [ROMANZOV.] 

 RUMOHR, CARL FRIEDRICH LUDWIG FELIX, VON, a dis- 

 tinguished writer on art, was born of an old family at Reinhards- 

 grimma, his father's estate near Dresden, in 1785. He was educated 

 at the Gymnasium, or high school of Holzmiinden, in Brunswick, 

 whence he went to the University of Gottingen; but already at the 

 age of fifteen he neglected .-very other study for that of art, abruptly 

 discontinuing his studies at the university and placing himself with 

 the painter J. D. Fiorillo, well known as the author of a general 

 history of modern painting, and then established in Gottingen. From 

 Fiorillo, Rumohr heard much about Italy which excited his imagi- 

 nation, and determined him to visit that country as soon as he had 

 acquired some knowledge of the various schools and styles of art. He 

 accordingly visited many collections; but above all the celebrated 



gallery of Dresden attracted his attention, and especially the works of 

 ftaffaelle and Paul Veronese. In 1804, in his twentieth year, he made 

 lis first tour in Italy, and visited Bologna, Florence, Siena, and Rome. 

 [n Rome he made the acquaintance of Thorwaldsen, Schick, Friedrich 

 Tieck, and Koch the landscape painter; Carstens had already left. 

 He further enjoyed the friendship of Wilhelm and Alexander von 

 Humboldt, and Monaignore della Genga, nineteen years afterwards 

 Pope Leo XII. 



From Rome, Rumohr went to Naples, and there commenced the 

 formation of a collection of antiquities : he had already been collecting 

 prints for some years. He returned to Germany in 1805, in the com- 

 pany of Ludwig Tieck. In Bavaria he was honoured with the 

 jonfidence of the crown prince, afterwards King Ludwig of Bavaria. 

 From 1805 to 1815 his time was passed chiefly in Bavaria and on his 

 own estates in Holstein. Though he took great interest in the political 

 changes of that time, he meddled very little with them. His literary 

 activity commenced soon after his return from Italy, but his first 

 publication appeared iu 1811 ' Erlauterungen einiger artistischen 

 Bemerkungen in der Abhandlung des Herrn Hofraths Jacobs uber 

 den Reichthum der Griechen an Plastischen Kunstwerken.' This was 

 followed by other essays on various departments of art, and among 

 them a work entitled ' Sammlung fur Kunst und Historic,' 2 vols. 8vo, 

 Hamburg, 1816. 



In 1815 he revisited Italy, and commenced in Florence the researches 

 for hia principal work, the ' Italienische Forschungen,' of which the 

 three volumes were published in two portions in a later period of his 

 life. In Rome he found Overbeck leading the German artists into a 

 new or rather old sphere of art [OVERBECK], which forcibly impressed 

 Rumohr. In 1827 appeared at Berlin the first and second volumes of 

 the 'Italian Researches' ('Italienische Forschungen'), a critical work 

 on the history of art, and compiled exclusively from the original 

 archives and documents in various buildings at Florence ; in this 

 work Rumohr clears up many obscurities and corrects several errors 

 in Vasari. ' In 1828 he paid a third visit to Italy, when he was con- 

 sulted in the purchases for the new picture-gallery which was then 

 being established at Berlin, and he acted as cicerone to the present 

 King of Prussia iu Florence, when crown prince. He was employed by 

 the prince in several purchases, and upon his return to Germany was 

 engaged with others in the selection and arrangement of the objects 

 of art in the museum. In 1831 Rumohr published the third and last 

 volume of his ' Italienische Forschungen,' and various literary works 

 now followed in rapid succession and on various subjects. In 1832 

 appeared ' Konig's Geist de Kochkunst,' at Stuttgardt ; ' Deutsche 

 Denkwiirdigkeiten,' at Berlin ; ' Drei Reisen nach Italien,' at Leipzig ; 

 and the first volume of his ' Novellen,' at Munich : in 1834, 'Schule 

 der Hoflichkeit fur Alt und Jung,' at Stuttgardt ; and in the Leipzig 

 pocket-book Urania, ' Der Letzte Surillo,' a poem, said to be his best 

 production of that class : in 1835, in Munich, the second volume of 

 ' Novellen ; ' and in Liibeck, ' Kynalopekomachia, der Hundefuchs- 

 streit, mit Bildern von Speckter ' (' Dog and Fox Fight '), a satirical 

 poem on the times. Erwin Speckter was a young artist of Hamburg, 

 much admired by Rumohr : he died in that year. [SPECKTER, Euwix.j 

 In the same year also appeared the ' History of the Royal Collection 

 of Prints at Copenhagen,' drawn up by Rumohr and the keeper of the 

 collection, Professor Thiele ; and nt Leipzig, ' Contributions towards 

 the History of Art and the greater completeness of the Works of 

 Bartsch and Brulliot.' [BARTSCH, BBULLIOT.] In 1836 he published 

 at Leipzig two works on wood-engraving, ' Hans Holbein der Jtingere 

 in seinem Verhaltniss zum Deutschen Formschnittwesen,' and an 

 answer to a censure of this work, ' Auf Veranlasaung und Erwiedrung 

 von Einwiirfen eines Sachkundigen gegen die Schrift Hans Holbein,' 

 &c. These were followed, in 1837, by a treatise, ' Zur Geschichte und 

 Theorie der Formschneidekunst.' 



In 1837 he made a fourth journey into Italy, but he did not go 

 beyond Milan ; and this tour was made rather with political views than 

 as an artist. He published an account of his journey at Liibeck, in 

 1838, under the following title: 'Reise durch die ostlichen Buudes- 

 staaten in die Lombardei und zuriick uber die Schweiz und den obern 

 Rhein, in besonderer Beziehung auf Volkerkunde, Landbau, und 

 Staatswirthschaft,' to which he published some additions in the fol- 

 lowing year ' Historisehe Beilege,' &c. He had previously published 

 a work of the same kind on Tuscany, ' Ueber die Besitzlosigkeit der 

 Colonen im Neuern Toscana, aus den Urkunden, 1 Hamburg, 1830. In 



1841 however, after a fifth visit to Italy to Venice in the previous 

 year, he returned to his more genial subject, the history of art, and 

 published in Leipzig an inquiry into the invention attributed to 

 Finiguerra of printing with engraved plates on damped paper 

 ' Untersuchung, dass Maso di Finiguerra Erfinder des HandgriSs sey 

 gestochene Metallplatten auf genetztes Papier abzudrucken.' This 

 was his last labour in the history of art, and his last poetical production 

 of this class was, 'Raphaels Lehr-und-Wander-Jahre.' 



In 1841 he purchased a house in Liibeck, intending to end his days 

 there, and he fitted it up according to his own fancy. The winter of 



1842 he spent in Berlin, and he was then attacked with water on the 

 chest : he returned in the spring to Liibeck, where his physician 

 recommended him to visit the baths in Bohemia ; he accordingly set 

 out, but being too ill to proceed, he remained at Dresden, where he 

 died of apoplexy, July 25, 1843. 



