Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  With Cannell & Chaffin, Inc., Los Angeles, California
  With The Redfern Gallery, Laguna Beach, California
  Private collection, Southern California
  
  William Ritschel was educated in Nuremberg and later studied at the Royal Academy in Munich with the top academic painters of the day. As a young man he sailed for a time as a merchant seaman. His travels worldwide clearly had a profound effect on him as he went on to become a painter of the sea. In 1911 he settled in Carmel. At this time, his paintings were exhibited nationally as well as in Europe. His fame as a marine painter led to a membership in the prestigious National Academy in 1914. In 1918 he began construction on an ocean view home and studio in the Carmel Highlands. This castle-like stone estate, called Castellammare, was to remain his home base for the rest of his life. He was known locally as an eccentric painter, who was often seen on the Carmel bluffs with brushes and canvases in hand studying the changing light and tides along the coast.
  
  Storm Lashed Coast is a classic example of Ritschel at his finest, capturing the power of the sea and its beauty. His impressionist style is the perfect vehicle to represent the movement, color and force of the sea on the rocks. There is nothing static about a rocky coast and a turbulent ocean, and Ritschel was a master at transferring this dynamic interaction to canvas. It is no wonder that Ritschel's marine paintings were well received in exhibitions worldwide. As with his plein air contemporaries such as William Wendt and Guy Rose, Ritschel was to become synonymous with promoting the majesty of California in the first quarter of the last century.

---

Category: Fine Art / California and Western Paintings

---

Auction terms and conditions