page_title: Roman Anton Boos
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Anton Boos / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Roman Anton Boos: Selbstbildnis, um 1790, im Bayerischen Nationalmuseum
context_page_description: Roman Anton Boos was a German sculptor.
context_section_description: He was born into a family of farmers. Despite being unlettered, his father recognized his son's talent and obtained an apprenticeship for him with the sculptor Anton Sturm. It is unclear if he remained there until Sturm's death in 1757, but the year 1760 found him in the workshop of Johann Baptist Straub in Munich, where he stayed intermittently until 1769. He also attended classes at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and completed his studies at the Municipal Academy in Augsburg.
  In 1769, he returned to Munich and completed his first known commission; figures of Ludwig der Strenge and Ludwig der Bayer for Fürstenfeld Abbey. The following year saw the establishment of a private drawing school under the aegis of Elector Maximilian III. Together with the school's other founders, Franz Ignaz Oefele and Franz Xaver Feuchtmayer, he hoped to free Bavaria from its dependence on foreign schools and art teachers. He would later become a Professor at the Munich Art Academy.
  For the next fifteen years, he was primarily employed by the Electoral Court, securing a position as the official Court Sculptor in 1774, at a salary of 300 Florins. His first assignment was a figure of Amphitrite, one of several to be placed in the Nymphenburg Palace Gardens but, due to conflicting commitments (and a death) involving the other sculptors, he actually provided nine statues; a project which occupied him until 1785. During this time (in 1777) he married the daughter of his former teacher, Straub, and moved in with the family. From 1788 to 1798, he created a dozen vases with mythological scenes to set up between the statues and executed several commissions for sacred works at a number of churches.
caption: Self-portrait bust (1790), intended for his grave: now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
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