Born 1663 in Heidelberg, died 1731 in Frankfurt. He was a member of a family of painters: his father, who gave him the first instruction in painting, was the landscape painter Johann Heinrich, his brothers Philipp, Franz and Peter were also painters, Philipp became quite well known as an animal painter under the pseudonym Rosa da Tivoli. After he had spent some time in The Hague, where the records document him in the years 1684–85, Johann Melchior went to Italy, where he probably lived in the house of his brother Philipp in the Tivoli near Rome. After his sojourn in Italy, where we know he spent the time between 1686 and 1690, the artist returned to Germany (Nuremberg, Heidelberg, Frankfurt) and also visited Switzerland. In 1695 he was active in Frankfurt. He became acquainted with the Prince Bishop of Bamberg, Lothar Franz von Schönborn, who was enthusiastically buying animal paintings for the newly-built Pommersfelden Castle. Roos was appointed court painter, but he was unreliable and lazy and disappointed his patron. The people in Frankfurt also knew all about the painter’s easy-going life style and nicknamed him “Saturday Roos”. They said that he only painted on Saturdays, when his wife needed money to go shopping. Johann Melchior Roos’ style is basically much like that of his brother Philipp: both of them were animal painters, but the quality of Philipp’s work was incomparably higher. Johann Melchior’s works also reveal a knowledge of the animal painters of the 17th century Antwerp school, such as Frans Snyders, Paul de Vos, and others, from whom he obviously took some motifs and compositional solutions. His paintings were later imitated by the Neapolitan painter Domenico Brandi (1683–1736), who was also active in Rome. Even today it is still often very difficult to distinguish between the two brothers, since there are great similarities in technique and brushwork. The Pokrajinski muzej in Celje holds Melhior’s picture Landscape with a Herd, Inv. No. S 842.
Lit.: H. Jedding, Der Tiermaler Joh. Hein. Roos (1631-1685), Studien zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Vol. 311, Strasbourg-Kehl 1955, pp. 184-190; id., Bildnisse von Johann Melchior Roos (1663-1731), Mitteilungen des Historischen Vereins der Pfalz, Vol. 58, Pfälzisches Museum, Festschrift, Speyer 1960, pp. 308-316; Margarete Jarchow, Roos: Eine deutsche Künstlerfamilie des 17. Jahrhunderts: Verzeichnis sämtlicher Zeichnungen und Radierungen von Johann Heinrich, Theodor, Philipp Peter, Johann Melchior, Franz und Peter Roos im Besitz des Berliner Kupferstich-kabinetts, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1986, pp. 29, 118.