Louis RITMAN (1889-1963) ✿

Louis Ritman (1889–1963) was an American impressionist painter. He is best known for his female figure, painted in a fashion similar to that of his friends Frederick Carl Frieseke, Lawton S. Parker, and Richard E. Miller, all American artists who studied and lived in France.

Born in Russia, Ritman immigrated as a child to the United States, where his family settled in Chicago. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and later for a short period with William Merritt Chase in Philadelphia.

In 1909 he felt the romantic pull of Paris and went to study at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts, absorbing the academic methods of the time. His career dramatically changed course after a chance encounter with Frieseke at a Parisian café in which Frieseke invited him to summer in Giverny. Ritman accepted and was immediately inspired by the light, landscape and the creative atmosphere of the American Impressionist community there.