Excerpts from "Art-Talks with Henry Ward Ranger"

Henry Ward Ranger

American artist Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916) was a prominent landscape and marine painter, an important Tonalist, and the leader of the Old Lyme Art Colony. His memoirs and observations about art were recorded in a book entitled "Art-Talks with Henry Ward Ranger" by Dr. Ralcy Husted Bell. I found it particularly interesting to read about the attitudes of America toward American artists at that time and also his experiences with European painters. Here are some excerpts:

"When I came to New York, American art was at its lowest ebb. The old Hudson River School, or the American Dusseldorf, which had been popular and fairly successful, had become thoroughly discredited, with the result that the two leading picture houses, Goupil and Schaus, had entirely given up the handling of American art.

I remember going to the Goupil Gallery, where I gave my twenty-five cents to see the pictures, and finding nothing but foreign paintings, turned and asked: "Sir, haven't you any American pictures?" I can recall now the contemptuous way in which he replied: "No sir, we have no American pictures! All our paintings are imported."

Looking back, it seems as though the galleries then were flooded with fine Barbizon pictures. It was no uncommon thing for a dealer, returning from his annual trip abroad, to bring back from fifty to a hundred examples of this school. And we really had a much better chance to study the works of these men here in New York, than in Paris where I shortly went.

I felt that if I could go to the place whence came these masterpieces which I admired so much, I could revel in them to my heart's content; but I shall never forget the shock I received at my first visit to the Salon. As I remember, I could not find there a single picture of the sort I had come to see. I found the French artists, and the public generally, indifferent to the Barbizon men; and I soon realized there were more good Barbizon pictures to be seen in America than in Paris.

I made friends, fortunately, among the dealers, from whom I found that when a good Barbizon picture came into the market, it was held back for an American customer at an American price. It was another case of the prophet being without honour in his own country.

"Bradbury's Mill Pond"

"The Windmill"

The art of that day was divided into as many movements as there are now. The usual ambition seemed to be to paint a Salon picture and to get a medal. The Salon of the rejected, headed by Monet and Manet, attracted a large following. I remember that I was very much impressed by them. The sense of illumination, the quality of outdoors, the spontaneity of their work appealed to me very strongly and I came near joining the movement. But after trying their methods enough to feel at home in them, I found the call of the Romanticists stronger.

One street would be full of men who insisted that the only way to paint was to use pure colour, and to put it on in dots. These were the Pointillists. The clique of the next street insisted that the colours should go on in stripes, which, as I now recollect, looked like little coloured worms crawling over the canvas. These were the Stripists.

The feuds and fights between the different adherents of the numerous cults were as furious as the feuds between the different schools of today. I kept to the museums and studied my old masters. At the Louvre, I found my first Constable, which opened another line of sensations, and which finally sent me back to Claude and Hobbema.

About this time I met a little French dealer who was employed by a number of  French and English connoisseurs to buy such things as he thought they might like. G.D. was a charming character. When he visited me in the country, he would usually bring along a little picture, a Corot often, which he would put on the foot of his bed to study while taking his morning coffee.

His father had been a dealer, and particularly a patron of Monticelli. At Monticelli's death, there came to him all the artist's remaining pictures, including the starts and unfinished sketches, besides many incoherent works of his late absinthe period. I recall studying Monticelli's method of painting - and with this advantage: the facility with which it could be traced from start to finish.

"Children at Play" by Adolf Monticelli

One day I ventured to ask G.D. if he thought varnish a safe thing to use in painting. "Why yes, certainly! the Barbizon painters all used it." I said, "Are you sure?" He replied, "Yes! I have often bought varnish for "Papa" Corot, who used to send to my father to have varnish and other things sent to him. My father would send me out to get them." "Well," I said, "do you think you could get some of that varnish now?" "Yes!" he answered, "the same shop is around there"

So we went three or four blacks to a colourman's and went in. He asked for the varnish, and we got a bottle of it. I did not know what I was using for the bottle was labelled only "Vernis a Tableaux," and my life of crime, according to the views of my confreres, the plein airists, began then."

My first sight of the works of Israel, Maris, Bosboom and Mauve gave me the same thrill which I had received from my first acquaintance with the Barbizon painters, and I wanted to know them also. So I went to Holland with my hat in my hand and love and admiration in my heart. I had the pleasure of meeting all and knowing some of the masters intimately; and I have always remembered their kindness.

"Homeward Bound" by Anton Mauve

I knew Mauve and talked with him a great deal. I had formed a habit in particular of always carrying a sketchbook, and if something flashed before my eyes that seemed so beautiful it must be painted, I got out my sketchbook and made a "thumbnail note" and then, when I got back, I tried to do the thing from memory.  

In France this habit of work I was almost ashamed of, because there the catchword was: paint everything honestly, literally and directly from Nature. Nothing that depended upon memory was considered as having any merit, and I remember I spoke of this to Mauve, and asked him if he thought the practice safe.

He laughed and said, "Why, all the old masters worked this way; and I paint all my pictures from sketches." Instead of carrying a small sketchbook, he carried a large one of grey paper in which to jot down his impressions with charcoal or artist's chalk. Many of these sketches, which later became pictures, were sold in this country after his death.

Mauve, after early years of struggle, had just arrived at the point where his pictures were marketed as soon as finished.

He had left The Hague and gone to Laren, a little hamlet near Hilversum. There he had built for himself a comfortable house with an inside studio and an outside glass studio, where he could study animals in any weather, if he wished. His income had become greater than his modest outgo; and I recollect his saying how good God was in letting his work be liked so that he could paint with a mind free from worry over money-matters.

"A Shepherd and His Flock" by Anton Mauve

One charming thing I remember of the Dutch painters was their universal simplicity. One seemed to feel, no matter how great they were, that they still considered themselves students. They were ever ready and willing to help and advise any youngling who was in earnest.

I am very much indebted to them for the technical suggestions and illuminating remarks I heard during their conversation. There was none of that pose of: "Look up to me! I'm a master!" which you encounter so often in Paris, and I am sorry to say, once in a while in America.

Reynolds often speaks of the advantages he received from his copying during his stay in Italy; and similar tributes to the value of this branch of study occur in the writings and history of all the great painters. 

Copy of a Van Dyck by Thomas Gainsborough

In London, where I saw my first Academy Exhibition, I was much impressed by some portraits that suggested two masters I had been studying seriously: Rembrandt and Velasquez. I looked up the name of the painter and found it to be Frank Holl and learned that he was the leading man in portraiture in England. Later I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with him at the Savage Club.

He talked to me in a very frank and kindly manner and told me that he still made it a rule to devote two months of each year to copying from Rembrandt and Velasquez - going to Holland or Spain expressly for the purpose.

It is only fair to say, a slavish, unthinking copy cannot be of value. I remember copying a Corot which taught me more on certain valuable points than I could have learned merely through observation in several years. It was an almost completed little picture which Corot, I think, had started from Nature and carried on in his studio. It belonged to my friend who allowed me to copy it.

I studied the picture for some days, trying to follow Corot's method step by step, and to understand perfectly the reasons why. When I had worked them out in a logical manner, I put the picture up before me and went to work as though I were doing it from Nature and not from a picture. The result was, what one might call, more of a spiritual than a literal copy. But the performance fixed in my mind certain truths that might have taken me years to discover by myself.

I would like to get into my pictures of this region a little of the love I feel for those who made it.
I understand naturally why the woodlot was kept, and why the lane over the hill to the barn must lead to a back pasture. A farmer can't cut down a tree or build a fence or dig a ditch or throw a bridge across a rill without helping to humanize his land.

"The Woodland Scene" by Henry Ward Ranger

And a sensitive person will unconsciously feel the spell woven by generations of husbandmen piling the stones from the fields into walls, often with their rifles lying close at hand. He will enter into their lives and share in imagination their troubles and rewards. A landscape is as human as an individual - so is a tree. Sometimes I feel that I, a poor descendant of these men, mark a decadence by merely painting amidst the scenes of their heroic labours instead of doing more virile work.

 I remember one thing that made a great impression on me, and has given me much food for thought since. It was relative to the importance of a thorough foundation in art."

Shortly after my arrival in Holland, I had the pleasure of meeting Francois Buffa, the great expert and deal, and close personal friend of Israel, the Marises and Mauve. It was he who Boussod & Valadon asked to advise them when they were uncertain as to whether they should take up the work of the Barbizon men or not. He went to Paris, took one look, and said, "Take all you can get." He was then a very old man, with long white hair that hung over his shoulders, and he walked with a long, ivory-headed cane.

One day, I told him how much I admired the Dutch painters, and he said to me, "Yes, it is a fine school. It is our first school in over two hundred years, but it is finished." I did not understand him and asked, "What do you mean? You have Israel, Maris and Mauve, and so on." He replied, "Yes, very true! They are great painters, but the school, it is finished. There are none coming up to take their places. The young men are starting where the old men are leaving off."

One looks over the Dutch school today and one is tempted to believe that Mr. Buffa gave voice to a great truth - the necessity of a firm foundation.

It seems curious now, as one looks back, that pictures of the academic type of the men mentioned as well as the Salon pictures of the plein airists, should have been received with so much favour, and that they should have brought higher prices than the work of the Barbizon painters which has justly become so valuable.

I remember when "The Potato Gatherers," (pictured below) by an artist named Hagborg, received as much adulation, perhaps even more than the Millets which came into the market at the same period.

"Potato Planters" by Jean-Francois Millet

"The Potato Gatherers" by August Hagborg

Many can recall the sensation Munkaczy made with his "Christ Before Pilate," an enormous canvas of the Salon type which was shown in a store on Twenty-third Street, the walls of which were draped with dark hangings. To augment the effect, lights were turned low and the picture was illuminated with a blaze of light from special reflectors. I recall paying my quarter and groping my way to one of the seats which were arranged in theatre fashion, and listening to a gentleman who hourly ascended the platform and delivered a lecture on the picture. In Paris where it had been exhibited as it was in New York, the management employed an old man to weep daily in front of the picture.

These names and hosts of others which you will only recall by looking over the Salon catalogues of that period, represent some phases of ephemeral art.  

I remember one thing that made a great impression on me, and has given me much food for thought since. It was relative to the importance of a thorough foundation in art.

Shortly after my arrival in Holland, I had the pleasure of meeting Francois Buffa, the great expert and deal, and close personal friend of Israel, the Marises and Mauve. It was he who Boussod & Valadon asked to advise them when they were uncertain as to whether they should take up the work of the Barbizon men or not. He went to Paris, took one look, and said, "Take all you can get." He was then a very old man, with long white hair that hung over his shoulders, and he walked with a long, ivory-headed cane.
 

"The Five Windmills" by Jacob Maris

One day, I told him how much I admired the Dutch painters, and he said to me, "Yes, it is a fine school. It is our first school in over two hundred years, but it is finished." I did not understand him and asked, "What do you mean? You have Israel, Maris and Mauve, and so on."

He replied, "Yes, very true! They are great painters, but the school, it is finished. There are none coming up to take their places. The young men are starting where the old men are leaving off." One looks over the Dutch school today and one is tempted to believe that Mr. Buffa gave voice to a great truth - the necessity of a firm foundation.   


* "Art-Talks with Henry Ward Ranger" by Ralcy Husted Bell is available free and online at www.archive.org