Lot 141: Property of a lady

The Temple
signed 'Arild Rosenkrantz.' (lower left); signed and inscribed 'Arild Rosenkrantz, Liller House, Haversfield Gardens, N.W. 3, The Temple' on a label on the reverse
colored chalks on paper laid down
22 x 18in (56 x 46cm)

PROVENANCE:
Mrs. Cassel, London;
with Peter Nahum, London;
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

Born in Denmark in 1870, Arild Rosenkrantz began his artistic education in Rome in the studio of Modesto Faustini and after two years moved to Paris and enrolled at the Academie Julien. During his years in Paris, Rosenkrantz exhibited at Sar Peladan's Salon de la Rose+Croix in 1892-94. He also exhibited in Copenhagen and London, and in 1894 and the following year he traveled to New York where he started working with stained glass. One of his best known windows, the large East window at St Andrew's, Wickhambreaux in Kent, was made in the New York studio of John la Farge, the American inventor of opalescent glass.

Rosenkrantz joined the Anthroposophic Society in London. Having met Rudolf Steiner there in 1912, he and his wife were asked to join the group of artists in Dornach, Switzerland, who were working with Steiner on decorating the two cupolas in the first Goetheanum. Here Steiner introduced him to Goethe's theory of color, and this completely changed his whole outlook and way of using colors. Rosenkrantz felt he had a mission in carrying out Steiner's ideas of using the spectral colors in order to reach the invisible spiritual reality which lies behind the material, and Rosenkrantz clearly demonstrates his devotion to this theory in The Temple and The mysterious portal.