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for William Tylee Ranney
1813 - 1857
Ranney's father was a ship captain who was lost at sea when he was sixteen years old. Three years earlier, at age thirteen, he had been sent to Fayetteville, North Carolina, apprenticed in the counting house of his uncle. The work, however, proved to be of little interest and he was subsequently apprenticed to a local tinsmith. Around 1833 or 1834, at the completion of this term of service, he took up residence in Brooklyn, New York, where it is believed he pursued some training in art. A period of eight months service in the Texan Army in 1836, was to have a profound affect on his later practice as a painter.
Ranney returned to Brooklyn from Texas, resumed his studies, and in 1838 made his debut as a painter in the Academy's annual exhibition; he continued a regular contributor to the annuals from 1845 to the year of his death. His whereabouts from 1839 to 1842 are unclear, but by 1843 he was resident in New York; at about the time of his marriage in 1848 he moved to Weehawken, New Jersey, settling permanently in West Hoboken a few years later.
Although initially setting up as a portraitist, Ranney secured his reputation with historical paintings predominately concerned with the American War of Revolution, genre subjects drawn from his brief experience of Western frontier life and of duck hunting in the New Jersey marshes.
The impoverish situation of his widow and children at Ranney's early death from consumption was the inspiration for the establishment of the Artists' Fund Society, which provided a form of welfare insurance for the artists who were its members.
The Academy possesses two versions of this painting: this, which may be considered Bogle's, and a copy (see unknown artists, registration number 118-P) which repeats Bogle's image but is lacking in refinement of all details.
Ranney returned to Brooklyn from Texas, resumed his studies, and in 1838 made his debut as a painter in the Academy's annual exhibition; he continued a regular contributor to the annuals from 1845 to the year of his death. His whereabouts from 1839 to 1842 are unclear, but by 1843 he was resident in New York; at about the time of his marriage in 1848 he moved to Weehawken, New Jersey, settling permanently in West Hoboken a few years later.
Although initially setting up as a portraitist, Ranney secured his reputation with historical paintings predominately concerned with the American War of Revolution, genre subjects drawn from his brief experience of Western frontier life and of duck hunting in the New Jersey marshes.
The impoverish situation of his widow and children at Ranney's early death from consumption was the inspiration for the establishment of the Artists' Fund Society, which provided a form of welfare insurance for the artists who were its members.
The Academy possesses two versions of this painting: this, which may be considered Bogle's, and a copy (see unknown artists, registration number 118-P) which repeats Bogle's image but is lacking in refinement of all details.
