J. F. Roux
Roux thought that the act of artistic creation resides in the decisions that the artist makes about what to leave out from the represented world, so that a painting is the product of the artist’s considered choices about what forms and colours to emphasise. There are some early paintings at Langebaan of fishing boats and later, from a trip with Margot to Sicily, of dwellings. Roux was also commissioned on occasion to paint pictures of farm houses. But on the whole, his landscapes represent nature in all its timelessness, stripped of any trace of human intervention.
Carl Hancock Rux
Rux's great uncle, Rev. Marcellus Carlyle Rux (January 8, 1882 - January 5, 1948) was a graduate of Virginia Union University, and principal of The Keysville Mission Industrial School (later changed to The Bluestone Harmony Academic and Industrial School), a private school founded in 1898 by several African-American Baptist churches in Keysville Virginia at a time when education for African-Americans was scarce to non-existent. For about 50 years the school had the largest enrollment of any black boarding school in the east and sent a large number of graduates on to college. For the first five years, Marcellus Carlyle Rux was a teacher in the institution. Such was the record he made that he was promoted to the principalship in 1917. Under his administration, the school reached its highest enrollment and had its greatest period of prosperity. The post-Civil war school was one of the first of its kind in the nation and was permanently closed in 1950. The school's still existent structure once featured a girl's and boy's dormitory and President's dwelling and is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Marcellus Carlyle Rux is listed in "History of the American Negro and his Institutions".