Jan Henryk de Rosen
Jan Henryk de Rosen (February 25, 1891 – August 22, 1982) was a Polish artist famous for murals and mosaics. He served in World War I, rising to the rank of captain in the Polish army and earning several military honors. He also worked as a diplomat for Poland. In 1939, he moved to the United States, where he continued creating large-scale religious and public artworks and taught at the Catholic University of America.
De Rosen was born in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire, to painter Jan Rosen and Wanda Hantke. His family came from Polish Jewish roots that had converted to Calvinism. He converted to Catholicism in 1903. As a child he lived in Paris with his sisters Maria and Zofia (Zofia became a sculptor). He began by writing poetry before turning to painting.
During World War I he fought with the French army and later joined the Polish forces in France, known as the Blue Army. He received the Virtuti Militari, the Cross of Valour, the French Legion of Honour, and the Croix de Guerre. He also worked as a translator at the Paris Peace Conference.
After studying painting in Warsaw, de Rosen held his first major exhibition in 1921 and worked for the Polish Foreign Affairs ministry. In 1925 he had another major exhibition at Zachęta in Warsaw. Armenian Archbishop Józef Teodorowicz of Lwów asked him to paint murals inside the restored Armenian Cathedral there; he completed this work in 1929 with Polish artist Józef Mehoffer. He later created religious art in Poland and abroad, including murals at the Chapel of Saint Joseph near Vienna and two murals at Castel Gandolfo for Pope Pius XI. In the 1930s he taught at Lwów Polytechnic.
In 1939, at the request of the Polish ambassador, de Rosen moved to the United States to paint murals at the Polish Embassy in Washington, showing King Jan III Sobieski in Vienna, and he helped decorate the Polish Pavilion at the World’s Fair. The outbreak of World War II and the political changes in Poland led him to stay in the United States. He became a research professor of liturgical art at the Catholic University of America and a corresponding member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America. He continued painting religious and other works and even painted Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów for Pope John Paul II.
Two of de Rosen’s mosaics are among the largest in the world: the dome of the New Cathedral in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Christ in Majesty mosaic in the dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., which covers about 3,610 square feet. In 2018, a hidden mural by de Rosen was discovered in Lviv in the former Church of St. Mary Magdalene.
His works include the chapel at the Theological Seminary of Lviv (1929–30), the chapel of King Jan Sobieski at Kahlenberg near Vienna (1930), and pieces in museums in Lviv, Lublin, and Bydgoszcz. He painted murals at Castel Gandolfo for Pope Pius XI and produced works across the United States, including in Buffalo, Memphis, Pittsburgh, and several California cities such as La Jolla, Hollywood, Pasadena, and Sacramento. He often used wax tempera (pigment mixed with beeswax) on plaster with gold leaf, and it is noted that he sometimes liquefied the wax with alcohol, with rumors of using Dutch beer to help the process.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 03:34 (CET).