In November 1916, Henry Ward Ranger, a self-taught and highly successful landscape painter, dropped dead of heart failure in his Manhattan studio. He left an estate of about $225,000 to the National Academy of Design for the purpose of buying paintings of living U. S. artists (or those not twelve months cold) and presenting them to U. S. museums. Last week the Academy's committee handed out 13 slices of Ranger pie to eager museums all over the country, as follows:
Picture Artist Gallery
The Sermon Gari Melchers Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington)
The Offering Charles W. Hawthorne Cleveland Museum of Art
Madonna Ivan G. Olinsky Everhart Museum (Scranton)
Woman in Cloak Robert Henri Brooklyn Museum
In My Studio Leopold Seyffert Brooklyn Museum
Eagle Lake Jonas Lie State University of Iowa
Frances Frederick Carl Frieseke Washington County Museum (Hagerstown, Md.)
The Black Cloud Eugene Higgins Albin Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College (Ohio)
Summer William Langson Lathrop A. A. Anderson Gallery of Art (Richmond, Va.)
Joseph Pennell N.A. Wayman Adams Phillips Academy Museum (Andover)
The Fall Season Bruce Crane University of Nebraska
Street Shrine Jerome Meyers Brooklyn Museum
Fisherman Eric Hudson Topeka (Kans.) High School
Five other canvases have been purchased and are yet to be distributed including two rich prizes : Snow Fields by Rockwell Kent and New Years' Shooter by George Luks.
It was a carefully chosen collection, soberly distributed. Even more interesting to businessmen is the record of the Ranger Fund itself. No trust company was ever appointed to guard it. The Council of the National Academy has had full control of the capital since 1919 when the estate was settled. Since then, when thousands of other estates have shrivelled, these presumably unbusinesslike artists have built the Ranger Fund up to $400,000. This year they had $35,000 to spend. They make no promises, but confidently expect to have as much to spend in 1933.