Montie Ritchie - Later Activities

Later Activities

Ritchie was a director of the Continental Bank in Fort Worth and was elected in 1947 as a director of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. He was named honorary vice president of the organization in 1995, a prestigious title which few receive. Like his father and brother, he too was an avid sportsman. A member of the British Alpine Club, Ritchie was the photographer on a 1949 expedition to Baffin Island within the Canadian Arctic, where there is darkness for much of the year.

Ritchie began collecting French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings in the 1940s. From 1990 until his death, Ritchie was a lifetime member of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee, where much of his collection of impressionist art was on loan. In 1992, he donated three fourths of his collection to the Dixon Gallery. The collection includes works by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat, Redon, Bonnard and Vuillard. The American Quarter Horse Association in Amarillo honored Ritchie in 1997 with one of its first Legacy Awards, which acknowledges those breeders who have provided a foundation for the quarter horse. JA Ranch has bred quarter horses since the 1930s; its current stock traces its pedigrees to those first horses. Ritchie was also known for his dedication to preserving ranching history. In 1972 and again in 1988, he made donations to the National Ranching Heritage Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.