Born in Philadelphia and living there for most of his career, Milne Ramsey was a still life, landscape, and figure painter and remains best known for his highly realistic still lifes, some of them in the trompe l'oeil style.

However, his version of trompe l'oeil seemed uniquely his own as his use of color was quite aggressive, and his paintings combined objects rendered in trompe l'oeil with others that were less precise. He had particular skill in detailed arrangement and composition of objects with various textures and reflecting surfaces.

Ramsey received his art training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and then spent over ten years working and traveling in Europe including study in Paris in the early 1870s with Leon Bonnat. During this period, he collected many Oriental artifacts that he subsequently used in his still lifes.

In the 1870s, he was a teacher at the Philadelphia School of Art and Design for Women, and was known for the wide array of objects that he kept in his studio.

He was President of the Philadelphia Sketch Club for two years during the time when T. Eakins and N.C. Wyeth were members. (From Charles Blow to askART)

Biography from the Archives of askART