Henry Ward Ranger

When renowned Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916) died in his New York City studio, he didn’t depart without a plan. Every dollar to his name—$250,000, all told—was bequeathed to the National Academy of Design, then under the supervision of the Smithsonian Institute. The only stipulation placed on the funds was that they be used to purchase the work of American artists: 2/3 reserved for those over age 45, the rest for anyone younger. It was a generous legacy, though hardly out of character for the man who founded the artists colony in Old Lyme, Connecticut, one of the most important sites for the development of both an American Barbizon school and American Impressionism. 

Ranger’s early days as an artist were spent retouching paintings in his father’s Syracuse studio. A move to New York City in the mid-1870s put him face to face with his first Barbizon school landscapes, the realist movement that preceeded Impressionism; a trip to Paris and Holland in the 1880s deepened his passion for the style through the work of Millet and Rousseau, and introduced him to artist colonies he felt were missing from the U.S. art scene; an 1899 train ride through Old Lyme prompted Ranger to declare it was “a place just waiting to be painted.” So he did, with his ever-present cigar, one summer after the next. He came back with friends, too, building the colony he wanted around him, surrounded by artists who loved the poetry of subdued palettes and disdained the airless qualities of varnish just as much as him. Ranger came to be known for his dark, forested landscapes backlit by skies with a burning glow at the horizon, though he also gave monuments of modernity like the Brooklyn Bridge an uncharacteristic serenity, softly integrated with the their surroundings.