The Pool at Hawk's Nest

Before painting in oil, Ranger first explored watercolor, teaching himself the technique while a student at Syracuse University. He mastered the medium so well that he exhibited and sold his watercolors in New York City. Before that, he earned money as a music critic. In the 1890s, Ranger expanded his artistic education with travel and study in England and Europe and began to paint in oil. He married an actress, Helen Jennings, who accompanied him on his travels. In France and Holland, Ranger became fond of the techniques of the Barbizon painters and the lesser-known Dutch painters called "The Hague," who focused on tonalist values to achieve luminosity and atmosphere. Back in the United States, Ranger established a studio and apartment in New York City on West Sixty-Seventh Street. He also set up a country studio in Old Lyme, Connecticut, where he founded a popular artists colony. But around 1903, he developed a distaste for the brightly colored plein air style of painting favored in Old Lyme, and set up residence in Noank, near Groton and the Mystic River.

This painting shows an idealized autumnal scene from the Lyme area. To the far left, an empty hawk’s nest perches in a tall, gnarled v-shaped branch of an oak tree. The landscape is so richly laden with trees and marshland that a tiny building (middle center) and two figures (middle right) are near impossible to discern. The snippet of blue water, signifying the pool, provides a visual break in the densely wooded russet and bronze-hued landscape.

Music remained a presence in his life; Ranger played the pipe-organ and hosted festive evenings at his home featuring opera singing. Enrico Caruso was a friend and frequent visitor. An astute businessman, Ranger bequeathed his estate to the National Academy of Design, instructing them to purchase paintings by living American artists over the age of forty-five and distribute them among museums.