Flowers: Peonies and Snowballs

Glowing against a dull brown backdrop, globular white snowballs and pink and red peonies overflow their container in Louis Ritter's large still life painting. Crowding just to the edges of the composition and asymmetrically arrayed, the flowers seem to have been thrust hastily into the modest clay pot, while more peonies are scattered casually on the table surface, yet to be added to a bouquet that awaits careful arrangement. The painting's dramatic contrasts of light and dark, along with the relatively loose application of pigment, reflect Ritter's artistic training in Munich, Germany, where such qualities were prized.

Ritter painted Flowers: Peonies and Snowballs in the village of Giverny, in Normandy, France, where he worked during the summer of 1887 in the company of several artists from Canada and the United States. Ritter departed at the end of the season and did not witness the development of Giverny into a thriving international artists' colony over the next twenty years. Unlike most of the artists who would later work in the village, Ritter never fully embraced the divided brushstrokes, brilliant colors, and preoccupation with natural light effects associated with the impressionism of Claude Monet (1840–1926), Giverny's most famous resident. Ritter's Willows and Stream, Giverny (TF 1992.129), also in the Terra Foundation's collection, typifies the interest in local scenery manifest in the work of Giverny artists. Flowers: Peonies and Snowballs, by contrast, is a rare indoor work that could have been painted in a studio in Paris, New York, or even the artist's native Cincinnati. However, by signing the canvas "Ritter-1887/Giverny," the artist designated its geographic site of production.

Ritter was known mainly as a landscape painter, but he also created many still lifes, a popular artistic subject in the United States. Among late nineteenth-century American artists trained in Munich and in Paris, the still life became the means to explore formal relationships of color, shape, and light liberated from sentiment or narrative. Floral still lifes were especially popular in the late nineteenth-century as a passion for gardening spread among Americans and Europeans. Along with chrysanthemums (a flower Ritter painted repeatedly), peonies and the smaller blossoms of the snowball shrub have a loose profusion of petals which may have encouraged artists to use freer brushwork as in Flowers: Peonies and Snowballs.

Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915 (Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 1993; April 1–October 30, 1994; April 1–October 31, 1995. [exh. cat.]

Giverny: une impression américaine (Giverny, An American Impression), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 1, 1998.

Giverny au fil des saisons (Giverny in All Seasons), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 30, 2001.

Giverny en fleurs (Giverny in Bloom), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 2–November 30, 2003.

Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life , Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (organizer). Venues: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 27, 2015–January 10, 2016. [exh. cat.]

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 48; fig. 38, p. 48 (black and white).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 48; fig. 38, p. 48 (black and white).

Gerdts, William H. Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993. Text p. 49; pl. 40, p. 50 (color).

De Margerie, Diane. Le jardin secret de Marcel Proust. Paris, France: Albin-Michel, 1994. Ill. p. 26.

Mitchell, Mark. Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life (exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art). Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015. Text pp. 190–191, 169 (checklist); ill. p. 191 (color).