American Masterpieces from Dryads Green Gallery (Please Scroll Down--Catalogue is Alphabetical by Artist Last Name)

Artist Name:        Louis Ritman Artist Dates:        1889 - 1963 Painting Title:      Happy Harvest Painting Date:      Undated Medium:             Oil on Canvas Signature:            Signed & Estate Stamp Provenance:       Private Collection Condition:            Excellent Size                     22 x 26 Frame Style:         Antique Worn Artist Best Price:   $542,500 Offered At:           CALL

Curator's Comments: Ritman’s voyage to America commenced when his parents emigrated from Russia at the turn of the century. They left the village life of Kamenets-Podolski outside Odessa for the immigrant experience of big-city Chicago. But it is important to realize that as a painter Ritman’s journey to America was lifelong, taking him from the France of Monet’s impressionism to the farmlands of southeastern Michigan and Minnesota—where he was to die in Winona at 64. After studying in Chicago, Ritman moved to Philadelphia, the starting point for so many American artists, and where he studied with William Merritt Chase. Like his compatriots, Ritman went on to set sail for Paris in 1909 in order to enroll at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he studied with Jean Paul Laurens. He also studied at another favorite studio of American expatriots, the Academie Colarosi, but the turning point in his career was meeting Impressionist Frederick Frieseke in Paris. Frieseke invited him to Giverny, where he first went in 1911, and from that time his style changed rapidly from Academic to Impressionist. In Monet’s colony, Ritman worked with both Frieseke and American impressionists Richard Miller and Lawton Parker, returning to Giverny each year until 1929. He took his female subjects from Frieseke and posed them in the light-filled windows and doorways favored by Miller. Parker was a strength in portraiture, and the result for Ritman was a finely detailed impressionistic subject seen in a chromatic background with splashes of color depicting Giverny’s radiant gardens. The work of this period is often intimate, or genteel, as symbolized by the fact that Ritman’s outdoor plein-aire work was often done in his walled garden, rather than among the willows and thatched farms strewn along the River Epte. As he progressed he was more comfortable with color alone, and this can be seen in one of the very best of his best Giverny farm scenes, Happy Harvest, which shows us the paysage with its amber harvest. The painting is a unique fusion that captures the agrarian beauty and harmony of the locale—the farm and its crop are the natural result of human labor. Note that Ritman's top price has increased by over $100,000 since we first posted this page. In 1930, Ritman accept a teaching position at the Art Institute of Chicago and he resided in the city for the remaining thirty years of his career. In this period his wife was a frequent subject, often posed as a flapper with a cloche hat in an environment created with a single color in all its tonal variations. Ritman exhibited at the: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the famous San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 and at the National Academy of Design, along with shows and exhibits in Chicago’s art and museum world. Ritman’s U.S. summers were spent among the farms and lakes of the Midwest, and he began to evolve a more unique and Fauvist perspective to deal with the American landscape. It is of note that the Smithsonian chose Ritman’s  Michigan Landscape for its collection. These paintings are full of reflections, and Ritman often imposed a heavy black lattice of tree trunks to frame splashes of strong color.  Here Ritman is at his very joyous and American best. We like this late work so much that we recently acquired two more from the estate, which we list below.

Just Added Late Period Farmstead--Top Value

Artist Name:        Louis Ritman Artist Dates:        1889 - 1963 Painting Title:      Orchard Farm Painting Date:      Undated Medium:             Oil on Canvas Signature:            Signed & Estate Stamp Provenance:         Private Collection Condition:            Excellent Size Unframed:     25 x 32 Frame Condition:  Reproduction Artist Best Price:   $542,500 Offered At::           CALL

Artist Name:        Louis Ritman Artist Dates:        1889 - 1963 Painting Title:    After the Haying Painting Date:      Undated Medium:             Oil on Canvas Signature:            Signed & Estate Stamp Provenance:       Private Collection Condition:            Excellent Size Unframed:     25 x 32 Frame Condition:  Reproduction Artist Best Price:   $542,500 Offered At:            SOLD

Click on link for:

You may contact us at:

Phone: 646-239-6142

Next Catalogue Page

Prior Catalogue Page

Email:

director@dryadsgreengallery.com

Terms & Conditions

Artist Directory

Home