Henry Rox "A Soft Carpet" Tommy Apple 1934 Vintage Silver Print

Henry Rox (1899–1967)
“A Soft Carpet On Which Tommy Could Fall”
1934 (printed c. 1939–1940)
Silver gelatin print
8 x 6 inches

Vintage silver gelatin print by Henry Rox created for the illustrated children’s book Tommy Apple and His Adventures in Banana-Land, written by James Laver and first published in 1935 by Jonathan Cape, London. This photograph appears opposite page 10 in the first edition and served as the original photographic source translated into photogravure for publication.

The image depicts Rox’s sculptural character “Tommy Apple” nestled into a stylized natural setting—a constructed landscape of sand, grasses, stones, and cattails. The caption in the book reads: “A soft carpet on which Tommy could fall.” Rox’s innovation lay in his development of what he termed “photo sculpture”: fully realized three-dimensional characters modeled from fruit, vegetable forms, plaster, and hand-worked details, then dramatically lit and photographed as theatrical tableaux. The result is neither conventional illustration nor simple photography, but a hybrid modernist practice merging sculpture, staging, narrative, and camera-based reproduction.

This print bears Henry Rox copyright stamp verso: 102 College Street, South Hadley, Mass. A rare surviving vintage silver gelatin print directly connected to the foundational Tommy Apple series—central to Rox’s synthesis of Dada-inflected sculptural wit, narrative modernism, and early twentieth-century photographic experimentation.

Henry Rox was born Heinz Rosenberg in Berlin in 1899 into a prosperous Jewish family whose department store operated in one of Berlin’s principal commercial districts. The family’s success enabled him to study at the University of Berlin (1919–1923), the Charlottenburger Kunstgewerbeschule (1921–1925), and in Paris at the Académie Julian (1925–1927) and Académie Colarossi (1925–1928). Trained as a sculptor, he established a modern studio in Berlin and exhibited widely, including the Salon d’Automne (Paris), Juryfreie Kunstschau Berlin (1926), Freie Kunstschau Berlin (1929), Preussische Akademie der Künste (1930), Berliner Secession (1929–1932), and Gallery Paul Cassirer and Alfred Flechtheim (Berlin, January 1933), as well as the Royal Academy of Arts (London) and the Royal Institute, Glasgow.

Returning to Berlin from Paris during the late 1920s, Rox worked within the experimental climate of the Weimar avant-garde and absorbed the influence of Dada. In 1933 he attended the Berliner Fotoschule, refining his technical understanding of photographic processes. It was in 1931 in Berlin—prior to his exile—that Rox conceived and began developing what he termed “photo sculpture,” constructing figures and miniature environments from fruits, vegetables, and fabricated materials and photographing them as narrative tableaux. This synthesis of sculptural construction and photographic precision emerged directly from his European modernist training.

With the rise of National Socialism, Rox and his wife Lotte fled Germany in 1933, leaving behind his studio, possessions, and established career. His parents and other family members remained and were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. He never saw them again.

Relocating first to London, Rox adapted his photo-sculptural language to commercial and editorial commissions. His clients included Harrods, Guinness, De Bijenkorf, Vitrolite, Helene of London, Dole, Shell Oil, Macy’s, and CBS Radio, and his work appeared in publications such as Life, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Newsweek, Town & Country, and The New York Times Magazine.

Rox emigrated to the United States in 1938. In 1940 he produced an animated short as part of the MGM motion picture Strike Up the Band, starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, bringing his constructed visual language to a national film audience. In 1939 he joined Mount Holyoke College as Lecturer in Sculpture, later becoming Professor of Art in 1954—the same year he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship—and Mary Lyon Professor of Art in 1963. He retired as Professor Emeritus in 1964.

The “Tommy Apple” and “Peggy Pear” photographs were created during this period of exile and reinvention. Though presented as children’s illustrations, they are structurally disciplined, emotionally resonant constructions by an artist of rigorous European training who rebuilt his life and career in America. They stand as distinctive examples of twentieth-century constructed photographic illustration, merging sculptural craftsmanship, theatrical staging, and modern photographic sensibility.

Preserved within the artist’s estate since his death in 1967, this print forms part of a cohesive body of work that remained largely outside the marketplace for nearly six decades.