Karl Ross

Ross was born in Ruhwinkel,[2] Holstein, then ruled by the Kingdom of Denmark.[3] His paternal grandfather, a doctor, had moved from northern Scotland to Hamburg around 1750;[4] his father, Colin Ross, married Juliane Auguste Remin[5] and moved in 1810 to the Gut Altekoppel estate in Bornhöved, which he managed and later acquired.[6] Karl Ross was the brother of Ludwig Ross, the classical archaeologist and Ephor General of Archaeology of Greece.[3]

In 1832, Ross travelled to Copenhagen, where he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts until 1834.[2] Among his teachers were Johan Ludwig Lund and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.[2] He was awarded an academic prize while at the academy, and sold several oil paintings to prince Christian Frederick, the future Christian VIII.[2]

Ross's elder brother, Ludwig, who was then head of the Greek Archaeological Service, invited him to Greece in 1837.[2] Throughout 1837–1839, he travelled through Greece, variously with his brother Ludwig and other central-European expatriates.[7] He made a journey through Attica to Marathon in 1837 with Ludwig and Ernst Curtius, the future excavator of Olympia.[7] He also stayed with Adolf von Shack near Sparta, travelling and painting, and travelled with von Shack to the ancient sites of Ephesus, Magnesia and Smyrna.[8]

Returning to Germany in 1839, Ross travelled to Munich in the August of that year.[8] From November 1842 until late 1843 he lived in Rome, where he befriended the Austrian painter Carl Rahl.[8] However, his visit was cut short by ill health, and he returned for convalescence to his family estate at Gut Altekoppel.[8] He studied in Paris during 1845.[8]

Two 1840 paintings by Ross showing subjects from his travels in Greece: the Temple of Apollo at Kolonna on Aegina (left) and a view of Athens from Mount Lycabettus.

During the attempted uprising against Denmark in 1848, the provisional government of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenberg sent Ross to Berlin, with a mission of reporting news from the revolt to the Duke of Augustenborg and negotiating assistance from Frederick William IV of Prussia.[9] He took part in meetings of the Provisional Government during April 1848, but played no further part in politics.[9] At the end of the war, he travelled to Munich and then to Rome, after which he settled permanently in Munich from 1851.[9] He is known to have owned Portrait of a Carthusian, a 1446 painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Petrus Christus, until 1854; the painting's ownership history is otherwise unknown until its acquisition by the National Gallery of London in 1857.[10]

The graves of Karl Ross (left) and his brother Ludwig in Bornhöved.

In 1847, Ross married Helene Abendroth, then aged twenty, whom he had met and taught during his time in Rome.[8] She was the daughter of August Abendroth, who had supported Ross's art career, encouraged his studies abroad and bought many of his paintings.[11]

Ross was affected by ill health throughout his life.[2] He died of typhus on February 5, 1858, in Munich, and was buried in Bornhöved.[12] The author Hermann Lingg wrote his obituary.[12] His wife Helene outlived him, dying in 1911.[8]