817 - Hermann Ritzau, clearing with a roe deer, oil on panel, Düsseldorf School

Hermann Ritzau, clearing with a roe deer, oil on panel, Düsseldorf School (1866 Wolsdorf – 1922 Helmstedt), oil on wooden panel, signed 'H. Ritzau' lower right. A view across an autumnal brown stretch of heath from which, in the middle ground, a single roe deer attentively raises its head. At the left stands a group of young spruces and pines, at the right the ground opens to a shallow hollow, the horizon closed by a low edge of woodland. The light stands low. The painting is applied in short, impasto strokes. Age-appropriate good condition, craquelure, soiled. Image 20 x 27 cm (HxW), framed in a gilt-coloured moulding, frame bumped, break line visible in the shellac at the top and left edges, frame width 9 cm Hermann Ritzau studied from 1883 to 1884 at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar and then until 1893 at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art under the landscape painter Eugen Dücker. He taught drawing at the Gymnasium Julianum in Helmstedt and travelled as a landscape painter in the Harz, the Lüneburg Heath and on the island of Rügen. His work ranges from finely drawn views to impasto paintings that lead towards Impressionism. For the centenary of his death the town of Helmstedt mounted a comprehensive exhibition in 2022, bringing the long overlooked painter back into view.