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Stanley Roseman
The MONASTIC LIFE
- The Times, London
     The Albertina presented the exhibition Stanley Roseman-Zeichnungen aus Klöstern (Drawings from the Monasteries). The then 38 year-old artist was further honored by the Albertina opening the exhibition of Roseman drawings on September 6, 1983, concurrently with the opening of the exhibition of the museum's Raphael drawings on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance master's birth. The exhibition of Roseman's drawings at the Albertina brought great prestige to the artist's work on the monastic life.
 ''The pictures - splendid and telling all at once - form the stimulating vanguard
towards so original and deep a study of the monastic life.''



''STANLEY ROSEMAN combines an innate artistic talent, expressed through a wide range of techniques,
with a profound interest in the human condition in portraying different kinds of people, professions,
social or artistic groups. With a seriousness that pushes him always further in treating a subject or theme,
he continually clarifies and refines, never letting his interest waiver or diminish.''*


- Bibliothèque Nationale de France
stanleyroseman-monasticlife.com - written and prepared for the Internet by Ronald Davis
''No one, I believe, in 1,500 years of Christian monachism has catalogued, defined
and described so clearly or so beautifully the business of the monastic life.
No writer, no sculptor, no painter, no architect has refined a distillation so pure,
so accurate, so breathtakingly clear as Roseman has done.''
Roseman's work has received wide critical acclaim and laudatory reviews in newspapers and journals and is represented in important museums and private collections. Recognized as a master draughtsman, Roseman was honored in 1983 as the first American artist to be given a one-man exhibition at the Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna's renowned museum containing one of the world's greatest collections of master drawings.
- ARA arte religioso actual, Madrid
*Stanley Roseman - Dessins sur la Danse à l'Opéra de Paris /  
  Drawings on the Dance at the Paris Opéra
(text in French and English),
  Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1996, p. 10.

     In April 1978, Roseman began his monumental oeuvre on the monastic life - a life centered on contemplation and prayer in observing the Biblical calls to prayer "At midnight I rise to praise you, O Lord'' and "Seven times a day I praise you'' stated by the Prophet in the Book of Psalms.
     Roseman was invited to share in the day-to-day life in monasteries of the Benedictine, Cistercian, Trappist, and Carthusian Orders, the four monastic orders of the Western Church. Behind the monastery walls the artist painted portraits and made drawings of monks and nuns at prayer, work, and study. He drew them at the communal worship in church and in meditation in the quietude of their cells. Roseman's ecumenical and critically acclaimed work, brought to realization in the enlightenment of Vatican II, depicts monks and nuns of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran faiths. Roseman, an artist of the Jewish faith, created his work in over sixty monasteries throughout England, Ireland, and Continental Europe.
"You have delivered to me two drawings by Stanley Roseman,
which I have acquired for the Albertina.
I thank you and want to express my conviction that the artist is
an outstanding draughtsman and painter to whom much recognition and success are due."

- Dr. Walter Koschatzky, Director
  Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna
     The Director of the Albertina, Dr. Walter Koschatzky, writes in a cordial letter of November 5, 1978, to Ronald Davis to acknowledge the first acquisition of Roseman's drawings for the museum:
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STANLEY ROSEMAN
Two Monks Bowing in Prayer, 1979
Abbaye de Solesmes, France
Chalks on paper, 35 x 50 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Drawing by Stanley Roseman, "Two Monks Bowing in Prayer," 1979, Abbaye de Solesmes, France, chalks on paper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Copyright © Stanley Roseman.