Henry War Ranger And The Humanized Landscape

OLD LYME, CONN. - Henry Ward Ranger is hardly a household name these days, even among reasonably close students of American art, but this insightful exhibition suggests he deserves better. Ranger (1858-1916), often lumped among the small band of late Nineteenth Century American Barbizon and Tonalist painters, is best known for his subdued, moody evocations of sylvan glades and forest interiors.

People tend to think of Ranger in the same general genre as George Inness and Dwight Tryon, although each was much more committed to Barbizon and Tonalism, respectively, than Ranger. Indeed, it is the range of Ranger's style, especially his atmospheric views of harbors and meadows and the jewel-like tones he achieved in a number of canvases that come as refreshing revelations in the exhibition at hand. For in addition to a goodly number of beautifully painted, but decidedly somber depictions of intimate woodland scenes, there are sparkling renderings of boats bobbing in New England harbors and light-filled pastoral landscapes that hardly fit the niche to which Ranger is so often consigned.

Celebrating the centennial of the Lyme Art Colony, "Henry Ward Ranger and the Humanized Landscape" at the Florence Griswold Museum through September 5, is comprised of over 40 paintings, watercolors, sketchbooks and vintage photographs that explore the artistic legacy and aesthetic achievements of the founder of the colony. Griswold Museum curator Jack Becker has not only mounted an interesting retrospective, but also has carefully emphasized the overlooked diversity of Ranger's output, thus permitting a rare opportunity to reappraise the work of this nearly-forgotten landscape master.

Becker's 64-page illustrated catalogue, with an essay by conservators Lance Mayer and Gay Myers, is the first scholarly catalogue devoted to Ranger's work. It is well done and a good buy for $19.95 (softcover).

Born in Geneseo, N.Y., somewhat south of Rochester, Ranger grew up in Syracuse, where his father was a successful commercial photographer and teacher at Syracuse University's College of Fine Arts. Young Henry studied at the university for two years, worked as a retoucher in his father's studio, and created watercolors of local scenery.

After moving to New York City in the early 1880s, Ranger drew on extensive travels to Canada and later Europe for light and airy watercolors that were exhibited in New York, Boston and Europe, and sold on both sides of the Atlantic. It was a high point for watercolors in America, and Ranger was in the thick of it.

Soon after marrying actress Helen Jennings in 1883, the Rangers went abroad so that he could study the Old Masters and learn more about contemporary European painting. Like many of his American contemporaries, Ranger was attracted to France's Barbizon painters, such as Corot, Daubigny, Millet and Rousseau, who specialized in depicting the beauty of tranquil, intimate aspects of nature, often shown in moody, muted colors.

Ranger was also influenced by contemporary Dutch painters, known as the Hague School, especially Anton Mauve, who emphasized careful drawing, tonal values and vivacious handling of paint in portraying nature. The American lived among them for a time in an art colony at Laren and, working outdoors, began to paint in oil as well as watercolor. This comraderie with fellow artists served as the model for the Old Lyme art community.

Returning to America in 1888, Ranger established his home and studio in New York City and began to execute European-influenced landscapes. With a nod to the influences of both the Barbizon and Hague Schools, he is usually classified as a Tonalist, a style popularized in the US, 1880-1910, by such artists as Inness, Tryon and James McNeil Whistler.

In general, tonalists used limited color scales and delicate modulations of light in crafting meditative, intimate views of rural landscapes. They preferred poetic qualities over scientific facts, and favored muted tones over the brighter palette of their Impressionist contemporaries. Tonalists, says art historian Matthew Baigell, "tried to capture both a mood in nature and their own mood as it was affected by nature."

Ranger's early oils, such as "The Lone Sentinel" (1895), with their dark, subtle tones and bucolic scenery, reflect Barbizon/Hague/Tonalist influences.

One of his early successes - and still a hit today - is "Golden Autumn" (1897), a simple view of a clump of trees bathed in glowing, golden light. A real beauty, this popular depiction of "noble trees" conveys a kind of brilliant aura when seen in person that is not normally associated with Ranger. Its rich colors and vibrant texture are reminiscent of Barbizon School leader Theodore Rousseau at his best.

Following his initial successes, Ranger began searching for a country painting place within easy traveling distance of Manhattan. After several painting excursions to Connecticut, he was delighted to discover Old Lyme.

"I want you to see a little of this beautiful country, where pictures are made - your station is Lyme," Ranger wrote from Old Lyme in the summer of 1899 to his New York dealer, William Macbeth. After years in Europe absorbing various styles, Ranger had found a place that, in the words of Griswold Museum director Jeffrey W. Andersen "combined the contemplative qualities of the Forest Fontainbleau [stomping grounds of the Barbizon School] with the hazy atmosphere of the Dutch lowlands. To Ranger's eye, Old Lyme was perfect."

A village rather frozen in time, located on the Lieutenant River near the confluence of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound, Old Lyme was also convenient to New York by train. The terrain was marked by salt meadows, lowland estuaries, shimmering stretches of water, open meadows, picturesque hills, mature trees, granite outcroppings and venerable homesteads bordered by stone fences. "The variety in the landscape would drive an artist to distraction. It is a singular mixture of the wild and the tame, of the austere and the cheerful," a prescient visitor wrote in 1876.

In this picturesque rural setting Ranger envisioned a gathering place for like-minded artists that would become the "new Fountainbleau in Connecticut." He took a room in Miss Florence Griswold's handsome boarding house, a late Georgian mansion on the town's main street that now houses the Florence Griswold Museum. With Miss Florence's support and encouragement, scores of artists followed Ranger to Old Lyme, launching three decades as a leading American art colony.

Among the painters joining Ranger in the early years were Gifford Beal, Bruce Crane, Frank Vincent DuMond, Will Howe Foote, William Howe, Henry Rankin Poore, Clark Voorhees and Carleton Wiggins.

Urged on by Ranger, they sought to extend their European training in neo-Barbizon/Tonalist works depicting the tangled trees, rocky pastures and farm animals of the area in dark, moody canvases. They constituted a short-lived American Barbizon art community.

"Ranger, an imposing figure with his husky frame and fully bearded face, punctuated only by an ever-present cigar, thrived on his position as master of this new colony - freely dispensing critiques of his company's work and expounding on the art of everything from painting to playing horseshoes, the latter of which occupied a good deal of his time behind the Griswold house," according to Andersen. Ranger was also a frequent entrant in the "fat man's race," a feature of the colony's track-and-field days.

"Connecticut Woods" painted in 1899, Ranger's first year in Old Lyme, typifies the artist's interest in utilizing "harmonious modulations of color" to depict woodland interiors. The overall composition, mottled texture and somber mood of this work suggest the influence of Frenchman Camille Corot, and reflect an affinity to the work of the American, Inness.

Characteristically, in the clearing at the center of the canvas, illuminated by a shaft of light, two small figures can be glimpsed, reflections of the humanizing element so often found in Ranger's landscapes. "Connecticut Woods," bought by prominent collector William T. Evans, is now in the collection of the National Museum of American Art in Washington.

Varied man-made constructions and rutted wagon paths that traversed the rocky countryside around Old Lyme offered Ranger subjects that celebrated New England agrarian activities. "Pasture, Stone Wall" (1903) features a laboriously-piled wall punctuating a rock-strewn meadow, while in "Top of Lord's Hill" (no date) a tiny man, horse and wagon are at work near the summit of the bleak rise. For Ranger, these small figures humanize the landscape through their intersection with nature, and enable the viewer to reflect upon the lives of the region's inhabitants," observes Becker.

With its rocky terrain, trees, stone wall, rudimentary pathway and farmers at work, all rendered with a limited, earth-toned palette, "Pasture, Stone Wall" became a sort of "icon" for Ranger's followers, according to curator Becker. Many tried to emulate the master in both style and subject matter.

By this time Ranger, who had painted a number of European landscapes, recognized that he could bring special insights to depictions of the American countryside. "I realized, when living abroad, that a French farm, or even an English one, was not mine," he said. "While here, in my own country, I understand naturally why the wood-lot was kept, and why the lane over the hill to the barn must lead to a back pasture."

Ranger's creative process involved making careful sketches in the field that were later translated into finished oil canvases in his studio where, as he preferred, he was "a little removed" from nature. He frequently applied paint thickly over varnish, achieving a gemlike effect in decorative patterns of light on leaves and the bark of trees and in spacious depictions of ships riding the waves off the New England coast. By employing glazes and varnish Ranger hoped his pictures, over time, would acquire "an Old Master glow." In this, he largely succeeded.

"Ranger was one of a number of artists," Becker notes, "who celebrated this [regional] landscape, and in so doing implied that New England was central in defining an American identity. Similar themes run through the recent "Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory" exhibition at the National Museum of American Art.

Ranger's sense of history and veneration for a New England countryside not yet overtaken by "progress" shines through in "The Road Into Town" (no date), a small canvas that "captures the idyllic and romantic quality of the New England village, which includes colonial houses, a distant church steeple, a horse-drawn cart, and several figures along a dirt road," as Becker describes it.

Soon after the turn-of-the-century, Ranger was spending his winters at the cooperative apartment/studio complex that he conceived and developed for artists on Manhattan's West 67th Street. This first artist cooperative building in the city featured spacious accommodations that included large northern windows and fireplaces, and a top floor for servants quarters. Ranger's own unit was filled with paintings and objects. Other Old Lyme painters in the building included DuMond and Childe Hassam.

Ranger's brief tenure in Old Lyme overlapped a year or two with that of the famed Hassam, American's leading Impressionist, an equally friendly by opinionated artist, who arrived in 1903. Hassam's brightly hued, sun splashed paintings were quite different from Ranger's more reflective, muted canvases, but the two did not clash overtly.

By this time Ranger, concerned that Old Lyme was becoming overrun with artists, was looking for a more private place of his own. In 1904 he settled on nearby Noank, to which he was attracted by a bustling fishing village reminiscent of Holland and views of rocky Mason's Island, with its venerable forests.

A few years after moving to Noank Ranger built a large summer studio across from the island, which he proceeded to depict for many years. A sociable man of broad interests and a noted trencherman, Ranger's life involved lots of good eating, bridge, horseshoe pitching, music and attendance at the theater.

His spacious Noank studio contained a pipe organ that he played,frequently accompanied by singers. Ranger often staged special events in the studio, such as evening sessions in which individual paintings on easels were spotlighted in the darkened room, accompanied by appropriate music.

A number of other professional artists, including the accomplished Charles Davis, took up residence in adjacent towns, like Mystic, and other painters followed. The Connecticut coast became a hotbed of talented artists.

Having already painted European harbor scenes, Ranger found ample similar subjects in Noank. He enjoyed painting maritime vistas in all kinds of weather, as exemplified by his stormy grey canvas, "Easterlyl, Noank" (1904).

"Ships in Harbor, Noank" (1906) is a sturdy evocation of ships clustered close to North Dock, near Ranger's first house. Although small in size, this painting suggests the expansiveness with which Ranger could paint when it fitted the scene and subject matter.

His favorite subject, Mason's Island, featured rocky hills and dense stands of old oaks and poplars. Local residents recalled seeing the artist on the island, seated on a folding stool, painting with one hand and swatting mosquitoes with the other. Out of these sessions came much-admired, quintessential woodland vignettes such as the classic Tonalist work, "Mason's Island" (1905), and "The Clearing (Golden Spring)" (1908).

The latter, a veritable jewel-like image, needs to be seen in person to be fully appreciated; Ranger is a painter to whom reproductions do not do justice. This painting's wonderfully textured surface, with strategic dabs of red paint for highlights, glows with the promise of springtime. The combination of superb technique, gorgeous colors and astute composition, including two small figures in the clearing, make it a memorable evocation of a New England spring.

In many of his carefully composed forest interiors Ranger leads the viewer's eye from the picture's darkened edges to hazy, sunlit places toward the center or in the distance, often containing a human figure or two and/or a pool, stream or break in the woods. "The Clearing" and "Old Oaks at Mystic" (1910) reflect this technique.

In many respects Ranger's work is reminiscent of that of Corot and Rousseau. Each emphasized personal interpretations of nature over realism, seeking to evoke the mood and the poetry conveyed by a landscape, in images shaped by harmonious modulations of color.

Late in his career, in deference to modern tastes for the brighter palette of the Impressionists, Ranger employed higher-keyed colors in paintings such as "Evening Sky" (1910). This work, says Becker, "demonstrates an almost expressionistic handling of pigment, the dramatic golden sky with red and pink highlights suggests a religious experience before nature, the fervor reinforced by the distant white church spire that breaks the horizon line," To observers then and now, this canvas recalls the work of J.M.W. Turner, the great English colorist.

At the same time, "Old Oaks at Mystic" painted the same year, seems to owe much more to Corot than Turner or the Impressionists.

After 1900 Ranger spent many winters in Puerto Rico, where he filled sketchbooks with bright, light-filled watercolors, such as "Tropical Landscape: (no date).

The recipient of numerous honors and awards, toward the end of his career Ranger was widely regarded as the "dean of American landscapists." As Becker writes in his catalogue essay, "The modulated tonality of his paintings provided an urban elite with picture that harmonized with works of earlier schools, represented the continuation of an American landscape tradition, and provided a soothing alternative to Impressionism."

Ranger became wealthy, largely through real estate investments. When he died at age 58, a widower with no children, this artist of generosity and grand gestures bequeathed his large estate to the National Academy of Design to establish the Range Fund. Its income was to be used to purchase paintings by living American artists over the age of 45 for permanent placement in American museums. Since 1919 the fund, still in business today, has allocated hundreds of works to both large and small institutions, a legacy that continues to enrich American culture.

Even before his death in 1916, Ranger and Tonalism in general had fallen out of public favor. The inherent subtlety of the style, with its delicacy and muted colors faded before the challenge of the brighter, often flashy, images of the Impressionists. As Andersen puts it, "Ranger's paintings require the viewer to look beyond the easy pleasures of Impressionism to the work of an artist whose complex paint surfaces yield passages of both strength and delicacy."

By exposing the range and variety of Ranger's work, this exhibition invites the kind of public appreciation that has eluded Ranger in much of this century. In a word, "Henry Ward Ranger and the Humanized Landscape" and the useful exhibition catalogue will go a long way toward resurrecting the reputation of a significant but neglected American artist.

In conjunction with the Ranger retrospective, two related exhibitions have been organized in nearby communities. "Ranger's Circle," featuring works by Charles Davis and other Ranger contemporaries, will be on view at the Mystic Art Association, 9 Water Street (open daily, 11 am to 5 pm) through September 18.

"Noank in the Era of Henry Ward Ranger," showing photographs and memorabilia of the time the artist lived there, is at the Noank Historical Society, 17 Sylvan Street (open Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, 2 to 5 pm) through September 5.

The Ranger exhibition comes at a time when the Florence Griswold Museum, already a unique gem among the nation's museums, is expanding its grounds to the Lieutenant River, reinstating the Griswold estate to 11 of its original 12 acres, and is conducting the Centennial Campaign to raise $8.3 million for further improvements.

Funds will help preserve the historic house museum (the dining room with panels painted on its walls and doors by resident artists of yesteryear is one of the great rooms in America); build gallery and storage space adjacent to the recently-acquired Marshfield House on the property; restore gardens and pathways, and augment activities in the newly-completed Education Center.

All this will enable the museum not only to better display its permanent collection of over 400 paintings and 2,000 works on paper by nearly 135 artists, but to recreate even more effectively an "American Giverny."

Visitors to the Griswold Museum complex today will see that great progress is being made toward the goal of recreating a beautiful site that influenced artists in the past and will inspire generations into the next century and beyond.

The Florence Griswold Museum, 96 Lyme Street, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday, 1 to 5 pm (April through December); and Wednesday through Sunday, 1 to 5 pm (January through March). Telephone 860/434-5542.