Henry Ward Ranger

Sunset – Red and Gold

oil on canvas

25 x 36 in.

John Herron Fund

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Henry Ward Ranger was born in Geneseo and raised in Syracuse, New York.  He enrolled in the College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, where his father was a professor of photography and drawing.  Ranger began his career retouching paintings in his father’s studio, and then spent time in New York City, where he was a music critic.  It was there that Ranger was first exposed to French Barbizon painting in the local art galleries.  He studied art in France which strengthened his interest in the Barbizon School artists. Their atmospheric style of somber colors became the basis for Ranger’s Tonalist style.  Ranger produced sketches outdoors and then transformed them in the studio into a very personal poetic vision.  He became the leader of the artist’s colony at Old Lyme Connecticut, where he created an American version of Barbizon style painting.  When Childe Hassam arrived the style changed to Impressionism which did not interest Ranger, so he moved to Noank, Connecticut.  Ranger lectured and wrote about art and was a member of the National Academy of Design.

Sunset- Red and Gold is typical of Ranger’s work: a woodland landscape rich in colors and unified by controlled light and shade.  During his own lifetime, this type of romantic landscape was very popular in America and brought Ranger notable success.  Before his death in 1916, however, the impact of Impressionism had begun to make this type of landscape painting look outdated

Reference

Estelle Ryback. Henry Ward Ranger: Modulator of Harmonious Color: A Monograph, Ft Bragg, CA: Lost Coast Press, 2000.  ISBN-13: 978-1882897483