Julian Schwartz writes:

"The artist Solomon Rotshteyn is passionately in love in the stage, in the actors. He works day and night for pay, which does not even bother to provide. In order not to stifle the outcome, he helps out with sign painting. In the summertime he works with certain stonemasons and painted monasteries in the surrounding area of Bucharest. In the 'Zignitsa' he painted artistic decorations, tailored theatre costumes and helped prepare the stage for the premieres, put together the theatre programs, on the title page of several programs, submitting 'resumes' by Sh. Rotshteyn.' Solomon Roshteyn in the Zignitsa Theatre is a mentsh to everyone.

...Although Solomon Rotshteyn has a golden hand. If he does not earn enough to ensure a full year of living for the household, he must paint the cloisters. A mediocre painter, but a typical entrepreneur of building or renovating monasteries, A certain [staneskn] takes Solomon over to every partner, and R. sleeps in a cloister. Passing peasants ask him: 'Do you sleep in a cloister at night?' 'Yes -- answers Solomon Rotshteyn -- 'What do you see? Are you afraid? 'For whom should I have fear? 'For the saints are in cloisters.' "I make them anyway' -- answers Solomon Rotshteyn.

...As a theatre decorator and [stsenograf-proyektant], he became deeply renowned. His mock-ups of a rural theater were on display at the grand exhibition of 1906 in Bucharest. Here also was a curtain painted for that theatre in Moldava. In the year of 1930 he was found in Bicaz. For decades he painted decorations and designed costumes for various theatre ensembles. Besides the Yiddish theatre, [he did this] also for the Romanian operetta troupe of Grigorin, for the ensembles in the theatre hall 'Datshia.' It says about the testimony in the archive of the theatre posters from the Yiddish theatre and the archive of the documentation section of the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Romania, and naturally the state archives.

In our authority there is a canvas 40/50 on which it is painted Yitskhok-Moshe (Moritz) Lieblich, the proprietor of the theatre hall, and the 'Zhignitsa' garden of Bucharest, and below on the left side, the portrait of the painter alone, from Rotshteyn. This picture, as are all of his works, is not signed, but his children of Bucharest immediately recognized it and remembered when their father painted it, deep into the nineties of the last century."

R. passed away on 3 July 1931 in Constanta, Romania.

R. was a brother-in-law of the scholar Lazar Sheyneanu.

• Julian Schwartz -- Der ershter stsenograf funem yidishn teater in rumenye, "Folks-shtime," Warsaw, 12 February 1966.