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About Henry W. Ranger
Sharing his reputation with such painters as *George Inness, *Alexander H. Wyant, *Dwight Tryon, and *Charles H. Davis, Henry Ward Ranger was first known as a member of the "Tonal School." Ranger was also known as a "painter’s painter." Neuhaus called Ranger "one of our best and most successful landscape painters." Indeed, in 1905, a younger painter, *Paul Dougherty, regretted that "juries and societies have never properly recognized [Ranger’s] power, and have showered medals and prizes on many who, artistically speaking, are vastly inferior to him." Dougherty’s words came near the end of Ranger’s career when his *tonalism had been transmuted into a conservative brand of impressionism. It is this last phase of his work that has revived his reputation.
The artists’s father was a commercial photographer as well as professor of *photography at Syracuse University. Perhaps this first sparked Ranger’s interest in creating imagery.
In any case, at the age of fifteen Ranger enrolled in Syracuse University where he finished only his freshman year. Supposedly young Ranger was inspired by an itinerant scene-painter and dropped out of school to train himself in painting. The dark and brooding spirit of the romantics, the works of the Dutch genre painters and of the *Barbizon School first appealed to the young man and for the following few years he painted watercolors under the influence of the European masters. Despite his father’s opposition to art as a profession, by 1878 Henry was sufficiently confident of his own work to open a studio in New York. Ranger wrote that he "landed in New York as a boy of twenty, with a portfolio of very bad watercolours and less than thirty dollars in my pocket." Reminiscing years later, the artist described New York as a provincial town in which American art was held in little regard and the "flow of public appreciation was in the direction of pictures that were frankly imitative."
Continuing his independent study, Ranger frequented favorite spots such as the *Metropolitan Museum, Goupil Gallery, S.P. Avery Gallery, and William Schauss Gallery, all located on Fifth Avenue. In such places Ranger studied styles and techniques in the highly finished works of academicians like Meissonier and *Gérôme, as well as paintings by Barbizon masters, such as Diaz de la Peña. Ranger was also fortunate to have met the American *Hudson River School painter David Johnson (1827-1908) and Wyant, who recognized the changing trend in American landscape art and attempted to modernize their styles. As a salesperson at Schauss Gallery, Ranger had the opportunity to study the gallery’s French Barbizon canvases, and he was permitted to sell his own work there. By the sale of his watercolors, Ranger paid for his living expenses and also saved enough to travel to France to learn more about the Barbizon painters whose works he had discovered in New York. Though disappointed in the paucity of these works exhibited in Paris, Ranger was impressed by the paintings of the impressionists and to quote him, he "came near joining the movement."
After a short period in Paris, Ranger spent his European sojourn traveling in France, Holland, England, and Spain with the Canadian painter, Horatio Walker (1858-1938). In Laren, an important *artists’ colony, Ranger met and was befriended by Anton Mauve (1838-1888). Ranger’s fascination with the painting of Josef Israëls (1824-1911), Jacob Henricus Maris (1837-1899), and Johannes Bosboom (1817-1891) equaled that which he had for French painters and he expressed admiration for the simplicity and modesty of the Dutch people themselves, and their appealing democratic spirit. Most likely after his return to Paris he had the opportunity to study the residual estate works of *Monticelli. After these formative years in Europe, Ranger returned to America in 1887 or 1888, already a typical adherent to the American Barbizon-tonalist tradition and capable of translating the paysages intimes from France to the New England countryside. Later he would publish articles on how to paint in the Dutch watercolor tradition.
In 1890, when Ranger listed his New York studio at 417 West 23rd Street, he exhibited one of his Dutch paintings and an American work entitled November in the Hackensack Valley, which he offered for sale at $1,000. Ranger immediately resumed an active work schedule and frequently demonstrated his ability as a businessman in maintaining excellent relations with art dealers. Ranger was not only an accomplished painter of intuitive poetry but also one who elevated his artistic concept to the plane of aesthetic analysis. Ranger compared the orchestration of musical and visual harmonies, with no direct reference to *Whistler’s paintings, while almost implying synaesthesia. Ranger’s reference to harmonious modulations of color achieved by intermixed (juxtaposed) tones that produce a "vibrating effect" indicate the artist’s limited application of the impressionist technique of *broken color.
Ranger continued to exhibit at the *National Academy during the 1890s when impressionism displaced tonalism in America. As a painter of widely diverse subjects, turning more to oil painting, Ranger traveled extensively. Blakeslee Galleries in New York sponsored an exhibition of Ranger’s landscapes in February of 1897. Two years later, he discovered *Old Lyme, Connecticut, which because of him, would soon be known as the "American Barbizon." He, like others, enjoyed the hospitality of *Florence Griswold at her mansion. Ranger maintained European connections: in 1900 he was the recipient of a bronze medal at the *Paris Universal Exposition, for Becky Coles Hill (unlocated) and Brooklyn Bridge (Art Institute of Chicago), which curiously forecasts the spontaneity of *John Sloan’s urban views. In 1901, Ranger became an associate of the National Academy and his works were avidly sought by collectors of contemporary American art: *Macbeth Galleries handled most of his art. Here at the turn of the century, the artist’s style revealed a strong assimilation of impressionism, despite his resistance. One wonders if *Childe Hassam’s arrival in Old Lyme in 1903 prompted Ranger to become more of an impressionist, even though he poked fun at Hassam’s work, which he predicted would clash with the predominantly golden-brown canvases at the 1903 Old Lyme exhibition. They did clash, but to the advantage of the impressionists. Ranger ceded to the impressionists of Old Lyme and moved to Noanck, Connecticut, near *Mystic.
By 1905, Ranger executed his well known High Bridge (Metropolitan Museum of Art), which Wolfgang Born described as a work "distinguished by a soft luminosity and broken colors that transcend his Barbizon period." For Born, Ranger "seemed at the threshold of impressionism, but there he stopped." One is tempted to compare later urban landscapes of *Ernest Lawson to distinguish the spirit of the new century in contrast to Ranger’s more romanticized images, though one could also point out similarities. On the other hand, Ranger’s East River Idyll of 1896 (Carnegie Museum) harshly depicts New York’s Lower East Side, which is so different from his typical warm, golden-brown images of Old Lyme.
As a master craftsman and stylist, Ranger attempted to maintain a balance between his personal tonalism and impressionism: he expressed these intentions two years before his death when he described his "conception of a great picture" as "One that has the enthusiasm, the vigour and the spontaneity of a sketch, with the ripeness of thought and colour, together with the subtlety that only comes from much labour." This dean of the Old Lyme artists’ colony was elected a full academician in 1906 and although he remained reasonably active in art societies, he preferred to keep aloof from the pursuit of winning medals. As a benevolent last gesture of artistic idealism, Ranger willed his residual estate to the National Academy of Design for the purchase of paintings by American artists, which was named the Ranger Purchase Fund. He died only three weeks after the passing of *William Merritt Chase, another important painter who took from French impressionism only the elements that appealed to him.
REF.
Ranger, 1893; Ranger, 1894; Dougherty, 1905; Bromhead, 1906; Caffin, 1907-A, pp. 213-214; Bell, 1914; Daingerfield, 1918; Jackman, 1928, pp. 181-182; LaFollette, 1929, p. 200; Neuhaus, 1931, p. 119; Isham, 1936, pp. 446-449; Born, 1948, pp. 167, 171-172; Hayward and McCloy, 1966; Heming, 1971, p. 61; Hoopes, 1972, pp. 114-115; Boyle, 1974, p. 80; Bermingham, 1975, pp. 164-165; Burke, 1980, pp. 318-322; Connecticut and American Impressionism, 1980, pp. 114-123; Andersen, 1982; Gerdts, Sweet and Preato, 1982; Weber, in Weber and Gerdts, 1987, pp. 18, 100, 118; Preato and Langer, 1988, pp. 26, 61-62; Florence Griswold Museum, 1989; Gerdts, 1990, vol. 1, pp. 121-125; Point of View, 1992, p. 144; Strazdes et al, 1992, pp. 388-389; Stott, 1998, pp. 40, 53, 57, 77; Becker, 1999; Love, 1999, pp. 189-190, 358, 718-719; Sobieski, n.d., p. 127. |
Paintings by Henry W. Ranger
| Trees and Houses |
| oil on canvas: 18 x 12 inches |
| estate monogram: lower right |
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