William Tylee Ranney (after) New York/New Jersey (1813-1857) MARION CROSSING THE PEDEE color mezzotint, framed, marked: lower margin in plate image size: H8" W11 3/4" *Artist biography: William Ranney, son of a captain in the West Indies trade, was apprenticed from 1826 to 1833 to a tinsmith in Fayetteville, North Carolina where he had relatives. He interrupted his painting studies in Brooklyn, New York to enlist in the Texan Army in 1836 to avenge the Alamo. While serving as paymaster, he was deeply influenced both by the military and the trappers and hunters gathered in Texas. For the rest of Ranney's career, he remembered their garb and anecdotes as romantic prairie life. He was back in Brooklyn in 1837, established as a portrait painter by 1838. In 1843 his studio was in Manhattan. By 1848 he was in Weehawken, and by 1853 in West Hoboken, New Jersey where his studio was "so constructed as to lead a visitor to imagine he had entered a pioneer's cabin or border chieftain's hut." Ranney was a sportsman, playing with the New York Cricket Club until 1854. He was described as a "glorious fellow" by William Sidney Mount, and his artist friends rallied to the support of his family after his death from consumption. Paintings for a benefit auction were donated by 95 artists including; Church, Bierstadt, Tait, Kensett, Inness, and the Harts. Ranney's Western paintings did not begin until almost 10 years after his return from Texas. His approach was to tell a dramatic story about the white hunters and pioneers, ignoring the panoramic landscape and minimizing the role of the Indians. He was an important member of the new American genre school, and the leader of the school, Mount, thought enough of Ranney to complete paintings left in Ranney's studio. Ranney's work was reproduced at the time by the American Art-Union.