Henry Ritter

At a young age, he went to live with an uncle in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, where he served a commercial apprenticeship.

After 1832, he received his first art lessons from Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath and Friedrich Carl Gröger.

[1] From 1836 to 1847, he was a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, in the classes of Karl Ferdinand Sohn and Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow.

Most influential, however, were the private lessons he took in 1837 and 1838 from Rudolf Jordan, who took him on trips to the North Sea, became his friend and taught him an ethnographic approach to painting.

Due to an ailment diagnosed as a "nervous fever", he moved to Seligenthal [de], near Siegburg.