New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-03-24
Art Exhibitions
Pictures by the Late Henry
w. Ranger, and Oriental
Antiquities on View
Nv ROYAL CORTISS0Z
Bv ROYAL CORTISSOZ

Friday evenings. About thirty-five OF
these works are from various American
and European hands; the rest are all
Rangers own productions. His busy
and successful career is quite ade-
quately illustrated. Though some OF
the canyases are carried to a lesser
degree of finish than others there is
hardly anything here of fragmentary
nature. There is no suggestion-su such
as is SO often given by a posthumous
exhibition of our being admitted to an
artists workshop, where we may sur
prise him of his guard and obtain new
insight into his personality and
methods. the show is rather OF the
kind which Ranger himself might
have determined upon if he had lived
to make one Of his usual appearances
before the public. We note the fact
with the more emphasis because it
bears significantly upon the character
of his art.
II is doubtful if he was ever off his
] guard. One does not figure him as at
all an impulsive collector of impress
sions, but as maker of pictures, an
artist not precisely insensitive TO
nature for her own sake, but so pro-
fessional in his habit that the natural
world did not fully exist for him until
he had put il on canvas. The point
/ is the more puzzlng, too, when we
/ consider his origins as a painter
In one brief biographical notice we
/ find him bluntly designated as self
taught The sketch of him in who's
Who" the materials for which must
have been supplied by himself. con
tains a fuller and yet no more illum-
mated statement: Studied art, outside
of academies, and during several years
residence in France, England and Hol-
land" Whatever that may mean, 1t
hardly serves to bring the secret of
his professionalism to the surface On
the other hand, it leaves the way open
to what seems to US reasonable con-
lecture.
Training in art means supplying a
painter with language which he may
then use in his own way, imposing
upon it his own accent. Deprive him
of it and he is driven. consciously or
unconsciously, to imitation, and the
odds are all in favor of his developing
q formula instead of a method, man
ner instead of a style. Something OF
this sort, we are persuaded, must have
happened to Ranger. Years ago he
made his first exhibition in New York
and we well remem ter the instant I'M
preston il conveyed: Here was a man
who had been seized by the influence
Of the Barbizon school and whose
natural affinity was Rousseau.
As time passed, the natural gifts he
possessed asserted themselves with ever
Increasing force, and the alien inRu-
ence, if il did not subside, was at all
events got a little more under control.
/ But the essential fact remaining was
/ that Ranger had not got his inspira-
tion from nature, that he had got 1t
from pictures, the pictures Of the Bar
bizon school, and that IS the fact
brought home to US again in the pres
ent exhibition. Staying outside acad-
emies in his younger days may have
involved his staying outside galleries,
but we doubr it.
The gift that betrayed him was the
one that ought TO have saved him, a
gift for the fluent and accurate definl-
tion of landscape forms and atmos-
pheric phenomena. The rough modula-
/ tions of the earth's surface, the char
acter of trees as 1t is expressed IN the
very shape and texture of bough and
leaf, the play Of light through foliage
/ and on tremulous waters, the form and
movement of clouds-all these things
/ he could bring into his picture with
extraordinary ease; and as he had, be-
sides, not only rich sense of color
1 but a good deal Of tact in the eXploita-
/ ton of il, IL is no wonder that he
was, as we have said, remarkably sue
] cessful. A pleasant il not at all orig
/ inal faculty OF composition gave the
last touch 20 his performances. When
he had got through with a canvas he
/ had turned it into very handsome
/ picture.
Going carefully through this exhibit
+ ton we have not found a single dull
/ landscape or marine. On the contrary,
we have found it from beginning 20
end endued with a certain vitality.
Why, then. DO We say that the facility
/ at the bottom OF it betrayed him? Be
cause it smothered whatever original
ity there may have been in him, left
him a maker Of pictures rather than a
creative artist.
What is it, after all. that gives the
Barbizon masters their Immortality?
Sharing in common the romantic nat
uralism that is their special stamp.
they painted pictures which have, 4
you like, certain family likeness, but
each man in the group turned the new
idiom 10 his own purposes. There is
no mistaking a Rousseau. or a DiaZ.
~ a~frn
and genius is an isolated phenomenon.
It may take part in movement, but
it stays a personal force. That is what
we miss in Rangers works. Il Is Curl
Gus 10 observe the point as il comes
cut in some of those canvases BY his
contemporaries, which he loved 20 have
about him. They are not "full dress
examples. These souvenirs OF Inneas,
Twachtman, Bunce. Wyant and a few
of the modern Dutchmen are not al all
important, in the usual acceptation Of
the word. But they are so like the
men 20 whom they are attributed, they
bring back so many memories Of inci
vidual achievement. II the painters in
question were rot in all cases prodi-
gious exemplars Of style, something
like style was, at any rate, lurking IN
the art of each one Of them.
Ranger, who, without any training,
could meet them on equal terms in the
rudiments of technique, nevertheless
failed 10 get as near az they got to the
root of the matter. Style was denied
TO him. fresh. strong gesture which
places an artist apart from his fellows.
making him the unquestioned master
of his own domain. He could observe
and report; he could not dream and
invent. He had no depth of vision.
He could paint. we had almost said,
superlatively well. But that judgment
would apply only to his craftsmanship.