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Lot 46
Henry Ward Ranger(1858-1916)Top of Lord's Hill
26 September – 7 October 2025, 12:00 EDT
Skinner Marlborough, MassachusettsSold for US$3,840 inc. premium
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Jelena James
Senior Specialist, Head of Sale
Claire Dettelbach
Cataloguer
Jewel Bernier
Cataloguer
Henry Ward Ranger (1858-1916)
Top of Lord's Hill
signed 'H. W. Ranger' (lower left); titled on a fragmentary label (affixed to the stretcher)
oil on canvas
28 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (71.7 x 92.1 cm)
signed 'H. W. Ranger' (lower left); titled on a fragmentary label (affixed to the stretcher)
oil on canvas
28 1/4 x 36 1/4 in. (71.7 x 92.1 cm)
Footnotes
Provenance
Cottier and Co., New York.
Christies East, American Paintings and Watercolors of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, January 29, 1982, lot 89.
N.B.
Henry Ward Ranger was born near Syracuse, New York. He moved to New York City in 1878 and began studying the works of the Barbizon School painters like Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, and Jules Dupré. In the late 1880s Ranger left for Europe, settling first in Paris and then in Holland, and associated closely with Hague School artists like Jozef Israëls. During his time in Holland he became enamored with the landscapes of the low countries that were so central to the Hague School - the flat, open fields, rolling hills, and expansive skies suffused with soft, grey light.
When Ranger returned to New York in 1888, he brought the techniques he'd learned abroad to American subjects in an effort to cultivate his reputation among local collectors. He became one of the first of the Tonalist painters, a name which denotes a Hague- and Barbizon-influenced style of atmospheric, subdued landscape painting. Wanting to further develop his distinctly American style, Ranger soon began searching for a place in which to establish an American art colony. In 1899, he visited Old Lyme, Connecticut, at the advice of a friend, and stayed at Florence Griswold's boarding house. He immediately fell in love with the landscape and was struck by its similarity to the French Barbizon forest. Ranger returned to Old Lyme in the summer of 1900 with other artists in tow, and thus was founded the Old Lyme Art Colony, which quickly became the largest art colony of its time. The members were loyal Tonalists until the 1903 arrival of Childe Hassam, after which the influence of the European Impressionists became more prominent. Anthony H. Euwer, writing in 1904, described Ranger's imposing, familiar presence in the colony: "There, of a summer night, one may see, smoking his cigar, the bulky form of Henry Ranger, one of our greatest living landscape painters, and one of the first to make famous with splendid canvases the extraordinary beauty of the Lyme country."
The present work depicts Lord's Hill, Connecticut, which sits just north of Old Lyme. A rutted path cuts over the hill, lined by rocks on one side and piles of logs on the other, and in the distance a pair of workhorses and figures trudge toward us. The painting clearly shows the enduring influence of the Barbizon school on Ranger: the sky is prominent and expansive, the light is delicate and evocatively rendered, and the palette comprises primarily earthen greys, greens, and browns. Most importantly, Top of Lord's Hill is a quiet ode to a landscape and its people. As Ranger said in 1914 of the Connecticut fields and forests, "I would like to get into my pictures of this region a little of the love I feel for those who made it. As for me, a landscape to be paintable must be humanized."