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R - ARTISTS

Louis Raemaekers   1869-1956
Dutch, b. Roermond, Netherlands

Roermond had primarily been a landscape painter when he started to work for the British War Propaganda Bureau in 1916. He produced many illustrations of the brutal German occupation of Belgium. While he personally visited the front lines, he admitted not to have actually seen the terrible atrocities he depicted. These images were issued in large postcard sets, and were also republished in France. It was reported that the Kaiser was so upset by these powerful pictures that he placed a bounty on Raemaeker’s head, but this story may have just been an effort in self promotion. After World War One ended he moved to southern France where he eventually produced anti-fascist cartoons but they were not as biting as his previous work. Ironically many of his ideas would later be transformed by the Nazis for there own anti-Jewish propaganda. In 1939 he moved to London but continued on to the United States in 1941 where he sat out the war years in Mamaroneck, NY. He would return to the Netherlands in 1953.

Fritz Reiss   1857-1915
German, b. Dusseldorf

After studying at the Dusseldorf Academy, Reiss began working largely as a landscape artist in painting and lithography. He was one of the Breisqauer Fives and participated in various art colonies. Though he lived and worked in a number of German cities, his work largely revolved around the scenery and peasants of the Black Forest. While some of his work is sentimental, most deals with the starkness of the landscape, which is enhanced by his application of broad flat fields of paint. Many of these painted images were used to illustrate postcards, but Reiss also produced more graphic looking chromolithographic cards.

Winold Reiss    1886-1953
German, b. Karlsruhe

Winold was the son of the academically trained landscape artist Fritz Reiss. He studied at the Academy and School of Applied Art in Munich. After emigrating to the United States in 1913, he took up residence in New York City and began doing graphic work and designing commercial interiors. He would become known for his Art Deco designs all across the country from The Crillon in New York to the Union Terminal in Cincinnati. He also designed the exterior of the Theater and Concert building at the 1939 NY Worlds Fair. Despite this success, Reiss held a fascination for American ethnic types, especially Native Americans. In 1920 he made trips to Mexico and Montana where he painted portraits on the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. On returning to New York he made illustrations for magazines such as Scribner’s, but more importantly the Survey Graphic who hired him to capture the important figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Reiss had great difficulty getting this work shown but the project, which ended in 1925 brought him much recognition and many more commissions. Two years latter, with the help of his brother Hans, he returned to Montana to paint eighty more portraits on behalf of the Great Northern Railway. These images were used on calendars and postcards for publicity. The trust Reiss had gained amongst the tribe from his first visit allowed him to create very intimate portraits of and ritual and dress. His popularity faded in the 1940’s as anti-German sentiment rose. After dying from a stroke he was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Blackfoot Reservation.

Leopold Resch   1877-1937
Austrian

Resch was a painter whose watercolors were used to illustrate postcards.

Ferdinand Freiher von Reznzek   1868-1909
Czech, b. Vienna, Austria

Reznzek had followed a family tradition becoming an officer in the cavalry before opening his own studio of industrial design in 1888. This painter and illustrator provided images for the magazines Jugend, Simplicissimus, and Fliegende Blatter in a somewhat expressive style. His work was sometimes risqué, and often satirized upper class life. Some of these illustrations, as well as reproductions of his paintings were also used on postcards. His older brother Emil Nikolaus von Reznzek was a well known composer.

Agnes Richardson   1885-1951
British, b. Wimbledon

After her studies at the Lambeth School of Art, Richardson became an illustrator of children’s books, greetings, and postcards for many different publishers featuring images of children and animals rendered in watercolor. Starting in 1912, she also designed posters for the London subway for ten years. During World War Two she produced a set of comic military cards.

Georg Richter-Lossnitz   1891-1938
Bavarian, b. Leipzig

After attending the Dresden Academy between 1910 and 1913, Richter-Lossnitz worked primarily as a painter and an etcher. While his work is representational, over the years he developed a heavy brushy style in which his high contrasts combined with strong compositions create a more modernist feel. During the 1930’s many of his oils and watercolors were placed on monochrome and color postcards.

Arno von Riessen   1865-1910
German

Von Riessen was a very popular painter of his time, who worked in a classical academic style and often used antiquity as a source of inspiration. Not only were many of his images printed onto postcards, many of his paintings were turned into real photo art reproductions.

Gustave Riom   1839-1898
French

Riom was a graphic artist who worked in an Art Nouveau style. He is best known for his chromolithographic portfolio of eight floral designs, Estudes des Flerus, produced in the 1890’s. This set was also reproduced in postcard form.

Alexandre de Riquer   1856-1920
Catalan, b. Barcelona, Spain

Riquer had begun studying art in France in 1869 but he ended up pursuing a career in engineering. He latter abandoned this choice to attend the School of fine Arts in Barcelona, and he would become a prolific painter, etcher, illustrator, and graphic designer. In addition to the posters and book plates for which he is best known, Riquer was a critic and poet who worked for many different magazines. In 1893 he became a founding member of the Societat Catalana de Bibliofils. His Art Nouveau style was heavily influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and Arts and Craft movement that he experienced when visiting London in 1879 and again in 1894. Most of his postcards were made between 1898 and 1903, which seem to reproduce his poster and book cover designs.

Florence Vincent Robinson   1874-1937
American, b. Taunton, Massachusetts

Robinson began exhibiting her work at the Boston Art Club in 1893 against her family’s wishes that she not become an artist. The pull however was so great that she broke off relations with her family around so that she could move to Paris. There she studied watercolor with a number of well known painters. Her landscape and floral work was well received and exhibited including at the Paris Salon. Rafael Tuck commissioned her to do a series of watercolors depicting New York City that were used to create a set of chromolithographic private mailing cards. Robinson lived in New York City and Hanover, New Hmpshire when she wasn’t painting in France, Italy, Spain, North Africa, or in Cuba. She was both a member of the Society of French Watercolor Painters and the American Watercolor Society.

Georges Antonine Rochegrosse   1859-1938
French, b. Versailles

Though Rochegrosse studied historical painting in Paris and produced work along this line, he also produced a fair amount of decorative, Orientalist, and erotic work. By 1882 he was exhibiting with the Paris Salon. He worked for the newspapers La Vie Parissienne and L’Illustration, and also illustrated many books, opera posters, and between 1910 and 1914 he designed postcards, many for Job cigarettes. Rochegrosse spent his later years in Algeria but died shortly after returning to Paris.

Carl Frederick Lobeck Rogind   1871-1933
Danish, b. Randers

After leaving the Academy in Copenhagen, Rogind began a career as an illustrator. At first he largely worked in advertising but soon he began contributing comics to humor magazines. Many of his images would also find there way into children’s books, and then onto postcards. Rogind created a number of cartoon strips.

Janis Rozentals   1866-1916
Latvian, b. Kurzeme

A painter and graphic artist who studied at the Academy of St. Petersburg. While he painted many portraits and landscapes, he was also attracted to themes of mythology and peasant life. Much of his work was influenced by the Symbolist and Art Nouveau movements. He provided many illustrations for magazines, posters, and postcards. One must be careful not to confuse art reproductions of his paintings with his much more highly stylized artist signed cards.

Friedrich Carl Georg Rumpf   1888-1949
German, b. Berlin

Fritz Rumpf was a painter and a graphic designer of posters and postcards. He also designed glamour poster stamps for high end fashion houses.

Charles Marion Russell   1864-1926
American, b. St. Louis, Missouri

As a child, Russell dreamt of being a cowboy, and at the age of sixteen he left home for Montana. There he worked in ranching for eleven years but it was his talent in drawing that got him noticed. By the 1890’s he had found enough patrons to become a full time artist. After marrying, he and his wife Nancy settled in Great Falls, Montana where he created over 2,000 narrative paintings and sculptures depicting Western themes. While his popularity was in great part due to Nancy’s endless efforts to publicize his work, he was was also one of the few Western artists to actually live among his subjects. Since 1888 he had been building close ties to the Blackfeet of Canada. The W.T. Ridgley Calendar Company used many of his images on their products, which included postcards.

Joseph Ruting   1909-1987
Dutch

Ruting worked as an illustrator providing images for calendars, comics, and postcards. His first strip, De Adventuren van Daantje Kaan appeared in 1940. Between 1858 and 1976 he illustrated a number of children’s books. Ruting had a particular interest in animals, and many of the continental sized lithographic postcards he published depicted birds.

Henry Ryland   1856-1924
British, b. Biggleswade

After leaving the South Kensington Art School, Ryland attended Hatherley’s in London and the Academy Julian in Paris. While an accomplished oil painter, most of his output was in watercolor. He also created woodcuts and designed stained glass. His work was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and he often portrayed women in classical settings. In the 1880’s and 1890’s he created decorative graphics and illustrations for magazines such as English Illustrated. Some of his images of women were placed on postcards he designed and as reproductions of his paintings. Ryland exhibited extensively, which in 1890 included the London Royal Academy. He was also a member of the New Watercolour Society.