Raphael Ritz

Raphael Ritz (1829–1894) is one of the most important artists to have emerged from the Swiss canton of Valais. In the 1850s, Ritz, who later became famous as the “Raphael of the Alps,” studied at the renowned Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Germany, and perfected his technique in the genre of mountain painting, which focuses on the relationship between landscape and man. Ritz, who felt a strong connection to his roots, created landscape idylls in faraway Düsseldorf for an audience that appreciated regional peculiarities. At times with a touch of irony, he put his works at the service of a modern effort to illustrate the timeless character of everyday life.

This new monograph looks at the work of the Valais-born artist beyond national borders and frames it in both the Swiss and international artistic contexts of the time. Ritz’s correspondence with his father, Lorenz Justin Ritz, who was a painter as well, is also comprehensively examined for the first time: it constitutes an important testimony to his artistic self-discovery. Selected photographs by Swiss contemporary artists from the museum’s collection show the Valais of today and establish a connection between Ritz’s ethnographic view of his own origins and the present.