Raphael Ritz

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Maria Joseph Franz Anton Raphael Ritz , also Alpen-Raphael or Walliser Raphael (born January 17, 1829 in Brig , Canton Wallis , † April 11, 1894 in Sitten , Canton Wallis), was a Swiss genre and landscape painter from the Düsseldorf School .

Life

Pilgrimage to Longeborgne , 1868

Ritz, the second of four children of the Niederwald- born officer, politician, portrait and church painter Lorenz Justin Ritz (1796–1870) and his wife Josefa-Klara (Josephine) Kaiser, moved with his family from Brig to Sion in 1839, where the Mother died in 1842. He received his first drawing lessons from his father. At high school he was particularly interested in natural science subjects. In the years 1851 to 1853 he apprenticed to his uncle, the history, portrait and church painter Heinrich Kaiser (also Keyser , 1813–1900) in Stans . Since he and his father doubted the artistic aptitude of the pupil, who tended to landscape painting, they considered a scientific training for him, which Ritz did not take after contact with the Nazarene painters Paul von Deschwanden and Theodor von Deschwanden (1826–1861) had been established and whose advice led to the decision to study painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . So he studied there from 1853 to 1856 with Heinrich Mücke , Karl Ferdinand Sohn , Wilhelm Schadow and Theodor Hildebrandt .

He then worked until 1860 in the studio of the genre painter Rudolf Jordan , of it to the folk - ethnographic approach led genre. During this time, Ritz developed into a painter of this genre with a scenic, idyllic and Swiss character. At the beginning of the 1860s, his painting brought his first major successes, around 1860 when the Commission directrice de l'Exposition bought the picture Waldkapelle in Brussels or the picture Small Cavalry by the King of Prussia in 1862. In 1860 Ritz acquired his own Atelier in Düsseldorf . Because of his father's age and illness, he reluctantly returned to Sitten in 1863, where he helped him make altarpieces. In 1865, Ritz returned to Düsseldorf to settle there permanently. In the winter of 1865/1866 he fell ill. This again and definitely forced him to return to Sitten. In 1867 his health got better again.

In the following years, in addition to painting, Ritz was also active in the natural sciences and published works in the fields of botany, geology, mineralogy, archeology, history and folklore, for example in the yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club , of which he was a member. In 1874 he took a spa stay in Albisbrunn . In 1875 he married Caroline Nördlinger, the daughter of an engineer from Tübingen . The couple had five children, including the later mathematician and physicist Walter Ritz . An illness that affected him from 1889 onwards led to his death in 1894.

Ritz was one of the discoverers of the scenic beauty of Savièse and motivated Ernest Biéler , a founder of the School of Savièse , to settle there. Ritz also gained importance through his participation in the founding of the cantonal archaeological museum of Valais and the Swiss National Museum . He also earned services in the restoration of Valais cultural monuments. Ritz was a member of supra-cantonal societies such as the Federal Commission for the Preservation of Historical Art Monuments . Despite his cultural isolation in the Valais, science and art made him well known.

Works (selection)

Engineers in the mountains , 1869/1870
The mineralogist , 1883, portrait of the mineralogist Gerhard vom Rath
The Occasional Doctor , 1886

Ritz's oeuvre, which is committed to the late romantic direction of the Düsseldorf School of Painting, comprises around 500 oil paintings. Drawings, which still had an independent meaning during his time in Düsseldorf, were later only studies for his paintings. Under Jordan's influence, the interest in the expressive possibilities of color took an important place in his artistic work. The initially differentiated and realistic rendering of light and the materiality of surfaces was displaced in his later work by a tendency towards unreal color tones and by the ebbing of the color design.

  • Chamber in Kleinbremen , 1856
  • La Sionne , 1857
  • Forest Chapel , 1860
  • Small cavalry , 1862
  • Divine service during the Week of Prayer , 1863
  • Majoria , 1867
  • Pilgrimage to Longeborgne , 1868
  • Engineers in the Mountains (Engineers in the Fog) , 1869/1870
  • Shepherd children in the chapel of Tourbillon Castle near Sion , 1872
  • The Botanist in the Mountains , 1872
  • On the eve of the festival or The Two Ages , around 1873
  • Epiphany in Savièse , before 1875
  • Devotional in the Alps , 1878
  • High tourists resting , 1879
  • Tourists on the Alp , 1880
  • Woman in a kitchen reading on Valeria , 1881
  • Goat boys playing cards , 1881
  • The Botanist , 1883
  • The mineralogist , 1883
  • The Occasional Doctor , 1886
  • The straightening of the Rhone , 1888
  • Pilgrims from Savièse , 1894

literature

  • Ritz, Raphael . In: Friedrich von Boetticher : painter works of the nineteenth century. Contribution to art history . Volume II, Dresden 1898, p. 444
  • Leo Luzian von Roten : The life of the painter Raphael Ritz von Niederwald . In: New Year's Journal of the Artists' Society in Zurich , Zurich 1896
  • Raphael Ritz 1829-1894 . Visp, La Poste cultural center, contributions by Sabine Leyat [et al.], Rotten, Visp 1999
  • Walter Ruppen: Raphael Ritz. 1829-1894 . Editions de la Matze, Sion 1980
  • Walter Ruppen: Raphael Ritz 1829–1894. The artistic work. Catalog of works . Special print from Vallesia, Vol. 27, Sitten 1972, pp. 73-239
  • Walter Ruppen: Raphael Ritz 1829–1894. Life and work. A 19th century Valais painter from the Düsseldorf School . Step Verlag, Vira 1971

Web links

Commons : Raphael Ritz  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Florian Hitz: The first ascent of Piz Bernina. History, execution and processing of a brilliant alpine act . In: Michael Kasper, Martin Korenjak, Robert Rollinger, Andreas Rudigier (eds.): Everyday life - nightmare - adventure. Mountain crossing and summit storming in history . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2015, ISBN 978-3-205-79651-0 , p. 238 ( Google Books )
  2. ^ David Karel: André Biéler at the Crossroads of Canadian Painting . Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 2004, ISBN 2-7637-8066-0 , page 167, footnote 144 ( Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Ritz, Raphael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ritz, Maria Joseph Franz Anton Raphael (full name); Alpen-Raphael, Raphael; Raphael, Valais
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss genre and landscape painter from the Düsseldorf School
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Brig , Canton of Valais
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1894
Place of death Sion , Canton of Valais