Forging An American Identity: The Art Of William Ranney

Philadelphia, Penn.

:A gifted American storyteller in paint, William Tylee Ranney (1813–1857) depicted mythic heroes of his time, both past and present — soldiers, pioneers, trappers, hunters — as exemplars of courage and independence. At a time when the country struggled for national unity and a sense of American identity, Ranney offered an inspiring interpretation of the history, character and future of the United States and its people.

Like so many of his countrymen, Ranney was an optimist, a romantic and a patriot. His paintings, expressing ambitions and concerns of mid-Nineteenth Century citizens, were often reproduced as widely disseminated prints that helped shape the aspirations of a burgeoning nation.

Regarded as an important yet underappreciated American artist, his relative obscurity is due in part to the brevity of his career — he painted for little more than a decade, dying of tuberculosis at age 44.

Well-known and highly respected by his fellow artists, Ranney is best remembered today for his narrative canvases of the settling of the American West. As this exhibition underscores, however, his range of work included portraits, lighthearted genre scenes, hunting and sporting vignettes and historical subjects. The exhibition organizers argue that, "Taken together, Ranney's paintings present a portrait of early American life and westward expansion while at the same time evoking a mythology that vividly reflected the artist's time and place."

Some 60 works comprise "Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney," on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through August 19. It was organized by Sarah E. Boehme, formerly of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. (where it began its tour) and now director of the Stark Museum of Art in Orange, Texas. She notes that new information about the painter and recently discovered paintings by him offer "new insights" in this "unparalleled gathering of the artist's most significant paintings."

Born in Middletown, Conn., the son of a sea captain, Ranney moved at age 13 to Fayetteville, N.C., where he lived with an uncle and trained as a tinsmith. His experiences in this bustling gateway to the West filled his imagination with a grand sense of the American character and landscape.

Moving to Brooklyn around 1833, Ranney began studying drawing and painting. Three years later, inspired by news of the siege of the Alamo, he volunteered to serve in the war for Texas independence. During his brief sojourn in Texas, he absorbed a wealth of observations about the culture, mores and landscape of the American West that would inspire his most famous paintings. His wife Margaret later observed that her husband was "so charmed by everything he saw…the wild enchanting prairies, the splendid horses," that he never would have returned East "but for the strong love he had for his mother."