William Ranney (1813 - 1957). William Tylee Ranney was a 19th-century American painter, known for his depictions of Western life, sporting scenery, historical subjects and portraiture. In his 20-year career, he made 150 paintings and 80 drawings, and is considered the first major genre painter to work in New Jersey, and one of the most important pre-Civil War American painters. His work is on display in several museums across the United States. One of his contemporaries opined, A specimen of Ranney is indispensable wherever a collection of American art exists. William Tylee Ranney was born in Middletown, Connecticut on May 9, 1813, the son of William Ranney, a sea captain, and Clarissa Ranney. In 1826, at the age of 13, he moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, to live with his maternal uncle, merchant William Nott, and be apprenticed as a tinsmith. It is believed that Ranney developed his first sketches during this period. At the age of 20 Ranney moved to Brooklyn in 1833 to study painting. On March 12, 1836, six days after the fall of the Alamo, he volunteered in the Texas Army to fight in the Texas War of Independence under General Sam Houston. His experience during this period is understood as the most significant influence on the subject matter of his future works. Ranney was reportedly in the guard placed over Mexican President Santa Anna following his capture at the Battle of San Jacinto. Ranney's nine-month tenure in the Texas Army ended on November 23, 1836. He remained in West Columbia, Texas until returning to Brooklyn in 1837. Ranney resumed his artistic endeavors in Brooklyn, becoming a self-taught oil painter, having never received formal training. In 1838 he publicly exhibited his paintings for the first time at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He received an award for his first genre painting A Courting Scene, which was exhibited at the New York Mechanics' Institute Fair. He traveled back and forth between North Carolina and New York from 1839 and 1842. In 1843, he opened a studio in New York City, where he advertised as a portrait painter, though few of the works from this period have been identified. In 1847 he moved to Weehawken, marrying Margaret Agnes O'Sullivan the following year. He and his wife briefly moved back to New York City around 1850. In 1853 they crossed back into New Jersey, settling permanently with their two sons at a 14-room homestead in the growing artist community of West Hoboken, New Jersey, which today is the southern portion of Union City. The homestead, which was located at Twelfth Street and Palisade Avenue atop the then-rural Hudson Palisades, and overlooked the Manhattan skyline, was characterized by Ranney's interests in both painting and Western life. It included a two-story, glassed-in studio, and a stable for horses that Ranney, an avid horseback rider, painted in many of his works. Henry T. Tuckerman, in his Book of the Artists, described Ranney's studio thus: It was so constructed as to receive animals; guns, pistols, and cutlasses hung on the walls; and these, with curious saddles and primitive riding gear, might lead a visitor to imagine he had entered a pioneer's cabin or border chieftain's hut; such an idea would, however, have been once dispelled by glance at the many sketches and studies which proclaimed that an artist, and not a bushranger, had here found a home. Ranney was a regular contributor and an associate member of the National Academy of Design and the American Art Union, both based in New York. He also painted historical scenes, such as those of the American Revolution. He mostly depicted the everyday lives of the affected populace rather than heroic battle scenes. Among his subjects of local landscapes was Hackensack Meadows. By 1846, his work began to show the influences of his experiences in Texas, including frontier backdrops depicting the Rocky Mountains. He featured pioneers, hunters, trappers, and explorers before the West was more widely settled by European Americans. Among these are The Old Oaken Bucket, The Match Boy, Prairie Burial, Scouting Party, Hunting Wild Horses and Trapper's Last Shot, which are straightforward presentations of everyday subjects, lacking overt sentiment.