Skip to main content

Henry Ward Ranger Art

American, 1858-1916
A key person in the establishment of the Old Lyme, Connecticut art colony in 1899, Henry Ward Ranger is regarded as the leader of the Tonalist movement in America and was a leading painter in this country in the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. He was born in Geneseo and raised in Syracuse, New York, and in 1873, enrolled in the College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, where his father was a professor of photography and drawing. Two years later, he became a re-toucher of paintings in his father's studio and did not earn a college degree. He also spent much time in New York City, where he was a writer of music criticism and visited galleries, where he had his first exposure to French Barbizon painting. During much of the 1880s, he painted watercolors of marine subjects, and exhibited those in New York City, Boston, and Paris. As a student in France, he became greatly interested in the Barbizon School of painters, and then a trip to The Hague, Holland, was even more influential when he met a large colony of Dutch painters called "The Hague School", whose emphasis was on Realism and Tonalism. Their soft, Atmospheric and Tonalist style of sombre colors seemed to suit him. However, his soft colors later became a special problem for anyone trying to restore his paintings as it was difficult to distinguish original color from soil on canvases. He did his sketches "en plein air" but finished his paintings in his studio. In 1885, Ranger moved to New York City and took up easel painting increasingly favoring oils over watercolors. In 1892, he had a one-man exhibition at the Knoedler Galleries in New York City. Many of his works in that show were forest interiors and tree studies. Gradually his palette lightened with color and luminosity suggesting the influence of George Inness. In the summer of 1899, Ranger discovered Florence Griswold's boardinghouse in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and he returned in the summer of 1900. With his influence and the friendship of Florence Griswold, he became the leader of the artists' colony of Old Lyme, "an American version of Barbizon" for three years. However, the prevalent style changed to Impressionism with the 1903 arrival of Childe Hassam. He became disenchanted with painting at Old Lyme with the arrival of Childe Hassam in 1903 and the subsequent influence of his Impressionist style. In protest of the plein-air, fast painting, and lightened palette and abstraction of these Impressionists, Ranger, in 1905, moved farther down the coast to Noank, Connecticut near the Mystic River. Like many of his associates, he also maintained a studio in New York City where he was very prominent and often lectured and wrote about art and took an active part in the art community. He was a member of the National Academy of Design and the National Arts Club, and he wrote articles about art that were published.
(Biography provided by Helicline Fine Art)
to
2
2
2
1
1
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
2
6,886
3,210
2,514
1,217
2
2
1
1
Artist: Henry Ward Ranger
Henry Ward Ranger Connecticut Landscape Oil Painting 1858–1916 American Tonalist
By Henry Ward Ranger
Located in Chesterfield, NJ
Henry Ward Ranger Connecticut Landscape oil/panel 12 x 16 image size 21 3/8 x 25 3/8 x 2 3/4 framed A wonderful example of Rangers painting style of glazes and areas of impasto text...
Category

20th Century Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Oil

"Stony Cove and Headland, " Henry Ward Ranger, Coastal Landscape, Seascape
By Henry Ward Ranger
Located in New York, NY
Henry Ward Ranger (1858 - 1915) Stony Cove and Headland, 1910 Oil on canvas 28 x 36 inches Signed lower right Provenance: McDonough Gallery, New York William Macbeth Galleries, New York American Art Association, The Completed Pictures Left by the Late Henry Ward Ranger, 1917, Lot 72 A key person in the establishment of the Old Lyme, Connecticut art colony in 1899, Henry Ward Ranger is regarded as the leader of the Tonalist movement in America and was a leading painter in this country in the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. He was born in Geneseo and raised in Syracuse, New York, and in 1873, enrolled in the College of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, where his father was a professor of photography and drawing. Two years later, he became a re-toucher of paintings in his father's studio and did not earn a college degree. He also spent much time in New York City, where he was a writer of music criticism and visited galleries, where he had his first exposure to French Barbizon painting...
Category

1910s American Impressionist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Related Items
On the Mountain Side
By Chauncey Foster Ryder
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower right: Chauncey F Ryder
Category

19th Century Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Oil

Allan Ramsay II, Evening Glow Near Glamis Forfarshire, Oil Painting
Located in Cheltenham, GB
This early 20th-century oil painting by Scottish artist Allan Ramsay II (1852-1912) depicts a gentle river view near Glamis in Angus, Scotland. As the sun...
Category

Early 1900s Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Brian Blood 'Monterey Bay' Plein Air California Impressionist Seascape Painting
By Brian Blood
Located in San Rafael, CA
Brian Blood (American, b. 1962) Monterey Bay, 2000 Oil on canvas board Signed lower right: BB signed, dated, and titled verso: Brian Blood, 2000 Monterey Bay 9in H x 12in L In a silvered gilt frame with linen mat and moulding: 17 1/4in H x 20in L Brian Blood is a resident of Pebble Beach, California. He began his professional life as a graphic artist and art director in Boston, Massachusetts. He then came to California to attend the Academy of Art College in San Francisco for both undergraduate and graduate studies. In 2003, Blood and his artist wife, Laurie Kersey...
Category

Early 2000s American Impressionist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Cetaldo (Italy) In The Rain
By Anna Hornby
Located in Brecon, Powys
Oil on canvas of a Italian Rural scene by this well known and much exhibited artist. Cetaldo In The Rain catches the atmosphere of a gentle rain on a hot summers day. Anna Hornby (1914 - 1996) studied art in Florence with landscape and flower painter Aubrey Waterfield in 1934, and later that year enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London where she studied under Francis Ernest Jackson...
Category

1960s Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

“”Sunset over the Marsh”
By Albert Lorey Groll
Located in Southampton, NY
Original oil on canvas painting of a brilliant sunset over a marsh. Signed lower right “A.L. Groll”. Condition is fair. Unlined canvas. Circa 1895. Presently unframed. Albert Gr...
Category

1890s Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

The Pond, Godfrey's Pond, Batavia, New York, Stafford, American Landscape
Located in Grand Rapids, MI
Stuart E. Zillman (American, 20th Century) Signed: Stuart E. Zillman (Lower, Right) " The Pond ", c. 1960s (Possibly Godfrey's Pond) Oil on Canvas Board 16" x 20" Housed in a 1...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Impressionist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Antique American Impressionist Winter Landscape Signed Framed Oil Painting
By Bruce Crane
Located in Buffalo, NY
Nice example from important American tonalist artist Bruce (Robert Bruce) Crane (1857 - 1937). Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed.
Category

1890s Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Sweet Dreams" Oil Painting
By Leigh Ann Van Fossan
Located in Denver, CO
Leigh Ann Van Fossan's "Sweet Dreams" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts sailboats floating in the darkness as the glow of the blue sky casts reflections on the inky ...
Category

2010s American Impressionist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Central Park, Winter
By Guy Carleton Wiggins
Located in New York, NY
Signed lower left: Guy Wiggins / Guy Wiggins; on verso (photo available): CENTRAL PARK. WINTER. / GUY WIGGINS N.A. / 1936.
Category

Mid-20th Century American Impressionist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

"Mount Rockwell, Glacier National Park, Montana, " Mountain Lake Landscape View
By Charles Warren Eaton
Located in New York, NY
Charles Warren Eaton (1857 – 1937) The Shadow of Mount Rockwell, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1921 Oil on canvas 20 x 24 inches Signed lower right: CHAS WARREN EATON. Provenance: The artist The Macbeth Gallery, New York Private Collection Sotheby's New York, American Art, April 14, 1989 ConocoPhillips, Houston Simpson Galleries, Houston, Fine Art & Antiques, May 18, 2019, Lot 447 Exhibited: New York, The Macbeth Gallery, Paintings of Glacier National Park by Charles Warren Eaton, December 13, 1921 - January 2, 1922, no. 2. Literature: "Two Exhibitions at Macbeth's," American Art News, New York, Vol. XX, No. 10, December 17, 1921. A contemporary critic wrote that the paintings of Charles Warren Eaton appeal to “the dreamers who find in them the undiscovered scenes in which their fancy long has dwelt.” Eaton’s contemplative landscapes exude a spiritual quality that moves the observer into a similar frame of mind. He loved to depict the ethereal light of dawn and dusk in late autumn or winter, usually without any reference to human or animal figures or buildings. These Tonalist paintings, with their subdued palette and relatively intimate scale, marked a definite break with the fading popularity of the panoramic and romantic views of the Hudson River School painters. Charles Warren Eaton was born in Albany, New York to a family of limited means. He began painting while working in a dry-goods store. At age 22, he enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York City and then studied figure painting at the Art Students League. By 1886, he was successful enough to quit his day job and make a living as a landscape painter. That year, he traveled to Europe with fellow Tonalist painters Leonard Ochtman and Ben Foster. In France, Eaton visited popular artist’s spots such as Paris, Fontainebleau and Grez-sur-Loing, and fell in love with the loose brushwork and moody style of French Barbizon painting. Returning to the United States, Eaton fell under the spell of George Inness, the foremost exponent of Barbizon style in the United States. In 1888, Eaton settled near Inness in Bloomfield, New Jersey, where Eaton lived until his death in 1937. In this period, he painted shadowy and ambiguous landscapes inspired by rural scenery in the northeastern United States. His signature theme was a cropped view of the branches, trunks, and foliage of a pine grove silhouetted against a delicately illuminated sunset or moonlit sky. He painted this vision so often between 1900 and 1910 that he picked up the sobriquet ‘‘The Pine Tree Painter.” After 1910, Eaton responded to the popularity of Impressionism by using brighter colors and painting sunlit daytime scenes. In 1921, he was hired to paint Glacier Lake, in Glacier National Park by the Great Northern Railroad Company as part of their ‘See America First’ campaign. He produced more than 20 paintings, among the artist's last works, that now poignantly remind viewers of the vast disappearing glaciers. Eaton tended to approach this mountain scenery from an oblique vantage point; he liked to capture small episodes, showing mountaintops nearly obscured by dramatically attenuated screens of fir trees. Eaton, like many Tonalist artists of his generation such as Henry Ward Ranger, John Francis Murphy, and Charles Melville Dewey...
Category

1920s Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Oil

"Stone Wall, Autumn, " George Smillie, Tonalist Fall Landscape View
By George Henry Smillie
Located in New York, NY
George Henry Smillie (1840 - 1921) Stone Wall, Autumn, 1879 Oil on canvas 9 1/2 x 15 inches Signed and dated lower right Provenance: Skinner, Boston, September 19, 2014, Lot 389 The career of George Smillie (1840-1921) followed the arc of nineteenth-century U.S. landscape painting. Trained in the Hudson River School tradition, Smillie successfully adapted to changing U.S. tastes and growing interest in European trends. In the late 1800s, he moved to tonalist paintings full of brushwork and influenced by French Barbizon painting. By the end of his career, he had lightened his palette to produce works similar to those of the U.S. impressionists. Yet in all styles, he was never less than competent, and his tonalist work is among the best produced in the United States. Like many nineteenth-century painters, George Smillie’s artistic training began with the study of printing. His father, James Smillie...
Category

1870s Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

"No Place Like Home", Greg Harris, Original Oil, Figurative, Landscape, 24x30 in
By Greg Harris
Located in Dallas, TX
"No Place Like Home" By Greg Harris is a perfect example of his most sought-after paintings. Measuring 24x30 in., this painting has a woman dressed in white sitting in a field of flo...
Category

1980s American Impressionist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Previously Available Items
"Landscape, " Henry Ward Ranger, American Barbizon Old Lyme Scene
By Henry Ward Ranger
Located in New York, NY
Henry Ward Ranger (1858 - 1915) Tonalist Landscape, circa 1900 Oil on board 12 x 18 inches Estate stamped by the National Academy of Design lower left Housed in a Heydenryk frame Pr...
Category

Late 19th Century Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger Art

Materials

Oil, Board

Henry Ward Ranger art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Henry Ward Ranger art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Henry Ward Ranger in canvas, fabric, oil paint and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 1910s and is mostly associated with the Impressionist style. Not every interior allows for large Henry Ward Ranger art, so small editions measuring 43 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Anthony Thieme, Wilson Henry Irvine, and Gifford Beal. Henry Ward Ranger art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $25,000 and tops out at $25,000, while the average work can sell for $25,000.

Artists Similar to Henry Ward Ranger

Recently Viewed

View All