![Bruce Crane sitting](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Bruce_Crane_sitting.jpg)
Robert Bruce Crane (1857 – October 30, 1937) was an American painter. He joined the Lyme Art Colony in the early 1900s. His most active period, though, came after 1920, when for more than a decade he did oil sketches of woods, meadows, and hills. He developed into a
Tonalist painter under the influence of
Jean-Charles Cazin at
Grez-sur-Loing
Grez-sur-Loing (, literally ''Grez on Loing''; formerly Grès-en-Gâtinais, literally ''Grès in Gâtinais'') is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in north-central France.
Sights
* The Church of Notre-Dame et Saint-Laurent ''(Church ...
. Crane's mature works were nearly always fall and winter scenes. He usually painted in his studio in
Bronxville, New York, where like many of the Tonalists he relied mostly on memories of his outdoor sketching experiences. Selected work can be found at the
Florence Griswold Museum
The Florence Griswold Museum is an Art Museum at 96 Lyme Street in Old Lyme, Connecticut centered on the home of Florence Griswold (1850–1937), which was the center of the Old Lyme Art Colony, a main nexus of American Impressionism. The Museum i ...
and the
Newark Museum
The Newark Museum of Art (formerly known as the Newark Museum), in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey, United States, is the state's largest museum. It holds major collections of American art, decorative arts, contemporary art, and arts of Asia, A ...
. He is a descendant of the Continental Congressman
Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism an ...
.
[Bruce Crane (1857-1937): American Tonalist. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-81018]
Early artistic work
Bruce Crane's father, Solomon Crane, was an amateur artist himself and interested his son in the New York art scene from a young age. However, it was a summer trip to the Adirondacks that piqued Bruce's interest in painting after witnessing “a lot of young lady amateur (artists.)” At the age of seventeen around 1874 he moved with his family to
Elizabeth, New Jersey where he worked as a draftsman for an architect. In hopes of starting a career in this field, he approached the famous artist
Alexander Wyant and asked to start an apprenticeship with him. Wyant asked to see some of Crane's work, but Bruce did not believe that his skills were adequate enough to impress Wyant. Therefore, he declined the request and spent the next year improving his skills before he showed his work to Wyant and began to work with him. They remained friends until Wyant's death.
Fame
!['Fall Morning' by Robert Bruce Crane, Dayton Art Institute](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/%27Fall_Morning%27_by_Robert_Bruce_Crane%2C_Dayton_Art_Institute.JPG)
Bruce Crane began to then study at New York's
Arts Student League and in 1876 he was featured for the first time in an exhibit at the
National academy of design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
, submitting his painting called "Old Swedish Church, Philadelphia."
In his promotional book ''A Souvenir of Cranford'' (1894), the architect and artist
Frank Townsend Lent discusses Crane's depictions of the
Rahway River
The Rahway River is a river in Essex County, New Jersey, Essex, Middlesex County, New Jersey, Middlesex, and Union County, New Jersey, Union Counties, New Jersey, United States, The Rahway, along with the Elizabeth River (New Jersey), Elizabeth ...
in
Cranford, New Jersey
Cranford is a township in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, located southwest of Manhattan. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 23,847, an increase of 1,222 (+5.4%) from the 2010 census count ...
:
The first the writer ever heard of Cranford was back in 1880, when his artist friend Bruce Crane told him that he was packing up his sketching apparatus and impedimentia preparatory to going to sketch in the neighborhood of Cranford, which he considered one of the most delightfully picturesque sections of country anywhere around or near New York City. The National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
, as well as other metropolitan art exhibitions, have contained many charming landscapes by such men as Bruce Crane and Hugh Bolton Jones, the material for which was gathered in Union County."
Crane soon began to paint locations of East Hampton and Long Island, which brought him praise and critical approval (as well as a steady income.) One unnamed critic stated:
Crane had y 1885proved to the satisfaction of the art public that he handled one kind of landscape with as much ability as another. (His paintings) were treated as skillfully as his (other works) with numerous variations of the leading motive of tone and color.
He then left New York to study in France with
Jean-Charles Cazin, a well known French painter of the 19th century. He experienced success there but things were about to change.
Family crisis
Bruce Crane's first wife Jeanne Buchard Brainerd was institutionalized in an asylum, though it was never made clear if this was for an actual mental disease or a case of alcoholism, as Ann Crane (her daughter from a previous marriage) suggested. Jeanne began to publicly accuse Bruce Crane of adultery with his step-daughter Ann but the case was dropped and the divorce finalized in 1902. Bruce married Ann Brainered two years later, despite a 25-year age gap. They had a daughter, also named Ann.
Return to fame
![Snow Scene MET DP-1171-001](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Snow_Scene_MET_DP-1171-001.jpg)
This period of time caused many critics to believe that he had lost his touch and his skills. Though it was his return to the Adirondacks that caused his work to mature as he began to focus on the basics of nature.
In 1909 he won a bronze medal at the
Carnegie Institute exhibition for his work ''November Hills'', showing that he was still a force to be reckoned with. Throughout the first two decades of the 20th century, Crane won at least 10 major national and international awards. This included the Inness Gold Medal (1901), Gold metal at the St. Louis Exposition (1904), The Saltus Medal (1912), and the silver medal at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition (1915). From 1929 to 1933, Bruce Crane was the President of the famed
Salmagundi Club
The Salmagundi Club, sometimes referred to as the Salmagundi Art Club, is a fine arts center founded in 1871 in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, New York City. Since 1917, it has been located at 47 Fifth Avenue. , its membership roster ...
of New York City (founded 1871) and its artist of the year in 1902.
He was also associated with the
Grand Central Art Galleries
The Grand Central Art Galleries were the exhibition and administrative space of the nonprofit Painters and Sculptors Gallery Association, an artists' cooperative established in 1922 by Walter Leighton Clark together with John Singer Sargent, Ed ...
, participating in its 1933 members' drawing.
In 1897, he was elected into the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1901.
Later life
Crane grew frail after breaking both of his hips in a fall in 1935, nearly immobilizing him. He spent the remainder of his years in Bronxville before passing on October 29, 1937. He is buried in
Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery is a cemetery in the western portion of Brooklyn, New York City. The cemetery is located between South Slope/ Greenwood Heights, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, Kensington, and Sunset Park, and lies several blo ...
, Brooklyn.
Descendants of Bruce Crane can be found living in Virginia and California.
References
Further reading
*
External links
''New York Times'' obituaryDecember Morn by Bruce Craneat Florence Griswold Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crane, Bruce
1857 births
1937 deaths
19th-century American painters
American male painters
20th-century American painters
American landscape painters
Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery
Tonalism
Place of birth missing
19th-century male artists
Crane family of New Jersey