Rafael Ritz

Rafael Ritz (January 17, 1829 in Brig – April 11, 1894 in Sion), was a Swiss painter.

He studied painting at first with his father Lorenz Justin Ritz (1796–1870), then with Melchior Paul von Deschwanden (1811–1881), and finally, in Düsseldorf with Heinrich Karl Mücke (1806–1891) and Rudolf Jordan (1810–1887).

He mostly painted in Switzerland, in his canton of Valais where he represented everyday life's scenes. Some of his works are indubitably part of the Swiss realist movement, treating the subject as the naturalists would have. He made numbers of landscape paintings as well as peasant's interiors but very few portraits. He founded with Ernest Biéler and others, the Ecole of Savièse.

He is the father of the physicist, Walther Ritz, most famous for his work with Johannes Rydberg on the Rydberg-Ritz formula.

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