Gene Ritchie Monahan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gene Ritchie Monahan (1908 – February 12, 1994) was an American portrait and landscape artist.[1] She is best remembered for the character and mood she conveyed in her portraits and for the realism in her pen-and-ink drawings for the Rainy Lake Chronicle, a weekly Minnesota newspaper with an international readership.[2]
Genevieve (Gene) Ritchie was the daughter of an electrician. She graduated from Denfeld High School in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1927. She hoped to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.[2] Although she was able to pass the entrance exam, the cost was too expensive. Instead she signed up for art lessons with local painters David Ericson and A. E. Schar.[2]
One of Ritchie's earliest works was a self-portrait that earned her first place in the Duluth Art Institute's annual Arrowhead Art Exhibition. The painting garnered attention from national art critics, leading the portrait to be featured on the cover of Art Digest. The magazine described her as "the find of the year" in 1930.[2]
Ritchie earned a teaching certificate at Duluth State Teachers College and then transferred to the University of Minnesota. She taught art at the Phyllis Wheatley Settlement House. She also gave private lessons and opened a painting studio to sell her portraits and teach classes.[2][3] University student George Monahan was an early customer and married her a year and a half after she finished his portrait.[2]
Monahan's husband joined the Army just before World War II. This prompted her to enroll in the University of Minnesota's graduate program in art education, partly in case something happened to him. She supported her children during the war by working as supervisor of art for Faribault Public Schools.[2] She had three children.[4]
