Early Morning

Louis Ritman's Early Morning captures a quiet, private moment in a bedroom flooded with summer light as a seated woman pauses in her dressing to look out an open window partly screened by a Venetian blind. Placed in the center of the nearly square composition, the model is a still, solidly realized presence within a mosaic of contrasting colors and patterns produced by the room's heaped bedding and pillows, clothing, wallpaper, and floor-covering, and by the foliage filling the view through the window. The vivid red of a necklace draws the eye to the woman's exposed breasts, and her dark stockings and the drooping straps of her undergarment underscore her nakedness, interjecting a subtly erotic note.

Ritman painted Early Morning in the rural French village of Giverny, site of a lively international artists' colony, where he worked beginning in 1911 in the company of other American impressionists, notably Frederick Frieseke, Lawton Parker (1868–1954), and Richard E. Miller, all of whom shared Ritman's Midwestern roots. All painted intimate female figural subjects in decorative images marked by vivid contrasting patterns and bright, often pastel-hued pigment applied in rapid dashes and spots of bright color-traits also seen, for example, in Frieseke's Unraveling Silk (TF 1992.35). During Ritman's first years in Giverny, to which Early Morning probably dates, he worked closely with Frieseke, who later described himself as a mentor to the younger artist. These artists' decorative approach, in which bright color and pattern take on as much importance as subject matter, is directly related to post-impressionism. Artists grouped under the name of post-impressionism often retreated from the purely optical emphasis of classic impressionism to focus more on pure design and expressive color. Ritman may have been influenced by Les Nabis ("the prophets"), an avant-garde Parisian artists' group of the 1890s, whose members created vividly patterned and expressively colored interior images.

The summer of 1913, to which Early Morning probably dates, yielded a group of paintings that mark the high point of Ritman's adherence to the intimate subjects favored by the so-called "Giverny Group." In these works, the partly undressed, solitary woman—his model now known only as Mimi—poses in the shallow space of an interior. Light penetrating through an open window illuminates the figure from the outside, emphasizing her rounded contours and the pictorial illusion of depth. As evident in Early Morning, Ritman's freedom of brushwork dissolves inanimate objects, from chintz fabrics to the foliage of trees just beyond the window frame, into overlapped masses of regularly patterned spots, but the figure, especially her nude upper body, is firmly delineated with carefully blended brushstrokes, according to the traditional techniques Ritman had absorbed in his academic training.  Early Morning exemplifies the blend of conservative naturalism and expressive pattern and color that characterized the "decorative impressionism" often found among mainstream American artists of the 1910s.

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, June 1–November 1, 1992; 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: intérieurs, extérieurs (Giverny: Inside and Out), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2000.

American Classics: Selections from the Terra Foundation for the Arts, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 26–July 1, 2002.

The French Experience: American Artists at Giverny, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 27–October 20, 2002.

A Place on the Avenue: Terra Museum of American Art Celebrates 15 Years in Chicago, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 16, 2002–February 16, 2003.

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 (on exhibit partial run: March 2–August 17, 2003).

Copley to Cassatt: Masterworks from the Terra Collection, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, and Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, September 5–December 7, 2003.

Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915, Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venues: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–July 1, 2007; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, July 21–October 14, 2007. [exh. cat.]

Impressionist Giverny: The Americans, 1885–1915, Selections from the Terra Foundation for American Art, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venues: Florence Griswold Museum of Art, Old Lyme, Connecticut, May 3–July 27, 2008; Albany Institute of History & Art, Albany, New York, August 23, 2008–January 4, 2009.

Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan with the Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan, October 9–November 28, 2010; The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, December 7, 2010–February 17, 2011; The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan, February 25–April 10, 2011. [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 pp. 89, 198; pl. 42, p. 199 (color).

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 pp. 89, 198; pl. 42, p. 199 (color).

Gomes, Rosalie. Impressions of Giverny: A Painter's Paradise 1883–1914. San Francisco, California: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995. Text pp. 89, 115; pl. 62, p. 95 (color).

Marcus, Stanley. "Following the Painters' Trail from Paris through Brittany." Watercolor 1:3 (Summer 1995): 48. Ill. p. 48 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M. et al. Impressionist Giverny: A Colony of Artists, 1885–1915. (exh. cat. Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. Text. p. 210 (checklist); cat. p. 159 (color). Bourguignon, Katherine M., Shunsuke Kijima and Sanjiro Minamikawa. Monet and the Artists of Giverny: The Beginning of American Impressionism. (exh. cat. Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo, and The Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art). Fukuoka, Japan: The Nishinippon Shimbun, 2010. Text cat. no. 76, pp. 140 (in Japanese), 189 (in English); ill. p. 141 (color).