Storm Clouds over Water (Long Island Sound?) (from Sketchbook) 1858 - 1916

Curator: Let's take a look at "Storm Clouds over Water (Long Island Sound?)" from a sketchbook by Henry Ward Ranger, dated between 1858 and 1916. It’s currently held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editor: My first impression is the power of those cumulous clouds towering above what I imagine is the Long Island Sound. You can almost feel the humidity, the pressure before the storm breaks. Curator: Ranger was deeply engaged with capturing the atmospheric effects of the landscape. He comes out of a tradition of American landscape painting that very consciously tried to forge a national artistic identity, reflecting a Manifest Destiny ideology that shaped America’s trajectory in that time period. How might that be reflected in his drawings of Long Island Sound, if at all? Editor: Well, thinking materially, Ranger has stripped his subject down to its most fundamental forms using graphite on paper, a medium incredibly accessible. Is this, perhaps, Ranger trying to suggest an egalitarian view of this "national artistic identity"? Also the speed that drawing lends to capturing a changing environment indicates that Ranger made this sketch en plein air, aligning this work with the emerging styles of impressionism that challenged traditional landscapes painting from studios. Curator: It is fascinating how the rise of plein air painting provided access to new subjects for painters to choose from, shifting tastes and shaping an emerging art market, as evidenced here in New York. Also note the confidence and control present within Ranger's economy of line in creating form. Editor: Absolutely. And notice how those broken, choppy lines representing the water juxtapose to the heavier hatching building volume of the sky. You feel the different weights of these elements as real things through that tactile differentiation of marks and graphite dust. This drawing gives clear expression to the sheer material energy that’s held in this environment just before a storm. Curator: Yes. Seeing Ranger harness the raw energy of an impending storm really drives home his connection to the transcendentalist landscape tradition so essential to 19th Century American cultural identity. Editor: Precisely, considering it now, the drawing presents itself as a document of time in more ways than just stylistically. We see how laboring on representing our experience with the sublime and untamable could itself become something historically sublime through artistic process.