The son of an art collector and amateur painter, Bruce Crane was educated in New York's public schools. After his family moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey, the seventeen-year-old Crane worked for a short time as a draftsman in an architectural firm. By 1876, however, he was back in New York, studying under Alexander H. Wyant. That year, he exhibited his first painting in an Academy annual, remaining a steady contributor until his death. From 1878 to 1882, Crane studied at the Art Students League and made several trips to France. He worked in Paris and spent time in the popular suburb of Grez-sur-Loing with fellow students William Coffin, Kenyon Cox, and Alexander and Birge Harrison. While there, he came under the influence of Jean-Charles Cazin, who promoted "memory drawing," or execution of landscape subjects in the studio, removed in time and place from the original source of inspiration. This practice became increasingly important to Crane, who later boasted, "I seldom look at a sketch when about to paint a picture" (Art Amateur, 74).
Back in the United States by 1882, Crane saw his landscapes begin to receive favorable critical notice. His early views of Long Island and his later, more tonal and autumnal scenes of New Jersey, Connecticut, and the Adirondacks were compared to similar works by his friends J. Francis Murphy, Henry Ward Ranger, and Dwight Tryon. In 1901 he received the first Inness Gold Medal awarded in an Academy annual exhibition, probably contributing to his election to Academician that spring.
The scandal brought on by his divorce in 1902 from Jeanne Brainerd and remarriage to her daughter, Ann B. Brainerd, checked his career over the next few years. During that time, Crane began spending summers in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Later he left Manhattan entirely, settling in Bronxville. He remained active in the Academy, which awarded him its Saltus Medal for Merit in the annual exhibition of 1912 and in 1925 elected him to a three-year term on the Council. Despite a debilitating hip injury in 1935, Crane continued painting until the day he died.
