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Charles Henry Phelps John P. East Telephone Broad 778 Phelps & East Counselors at Law [[First Column]] RANGER'S ART SEEN AT VARIOUS PHASES - Finished Paintings Left by Him Cover His Career as an Artist. - MORE THAN 100 IN LIST - Distinctive American Note Is Struck-Tabbagh Collection Shown. - All of the completed pictures left by the late Henry W. Ranger have been placed on public view in the galleries of the American Art Association and will be sold there on March 29 and 30. With them are a few paintings that belonged to Mr. Ranger and were the work of his prominent contemporaries. In connection with the exhibition a number of rooms are given over for the display of the Emile Tabbagh collection of Eastern faience, glass and textiles, the sale of which begins March 30. Sales such as this of the Ranger collection have a special interest. The sales of the studio effects of Wyant, Inness and Twachtman are recalled, and the sale stamp marked upon the Ranger canvasses will doubtless be highly appreciated by collectors who now know how to value genuine authentifications. Surprise has been expressed that so popular and successful a painter as Mr. Ranger should have guarded so many of his works in his studio, but the fact appears that all during the height of his busy career the artist was quietly reserving characteristic examples of his landscapes. As William Macbeth, his executor, suggests, it would seem that Mr. Ranger was contemplating some kind of a permanent representation of his life work Mr. Ranger's Purpose. "Had he been aiming," said Mr. Macbeth, "at leaving behind a chronological collection of his canvasses for preservation in one group he could hardly have chosen differently. The pictures now to be seen together for the last time doubtless give the opportunity Mr. Ranger desired to enable the public to make an estimate of his life work. It is true that to-day's estimate may not be the final one. It rarely happens that artists are fairly judged until time furnishes a proper perspective." The Ranger pictures number more than a hundred, and all are finished paintings. They exhibit all the now familiar traits of the artist, his broad, vigorous brush work, his love for sunlight filtering through the lacelike foliage of big trees, a love that Corot also shared, and his interesting color, which sometimes shows marked Dutch influences. In spite of the fact that Mr. Ranger [[/First Column]] [[Second Column]] was a painter pure and simple, and vastly more taken by the idea of a landscape than by its topography, it is surprising to see, now that so many of his works are assembled in one gallery, how distinctly American the landscapes appear. His work bears the plain hallmark of the artist's chief painting region and sounds the Connecticut note loud and strong. The rocky fences and stony pastures of the neighboring State provide many admirable themes, but the shores of the Sound, the deep woods and wide, smooth flowing rivers all have been glorified by the artist's brush. His Favorite Subject. Possibly the favorite subject, certainly it is one that Mr. Ranger came back to again and again, is the Corot motif of light sifting through fine foliage, and several of the most vigorous paintings are variations on this theme. The "Twin Trees," the "Long Pond," the "Sunset on the Mystic River,". the "Early Spring," are all important instances. Less familiar in style, perhaps are the two rich moonlights, one of which is made doubly striking by the decorative "storm circles" that surround the moon. Then there is the unusual "new England Church" and the view of Fourth avenue with the former building of the Seventy-First Regiment in the foreground. Besides there are many small pictures of pleasant meadows, glimpses of sea or strange effects of light upon trees, all enthusiastically recorded. Among the pictures by Mr. Ranger's friends are a very good Gedney Bunce, "The River's Edge," by Twachtman ; "Rough Country," by Wyant ; "A Group of Fair Women," by Williams ; "Evening," by George Innesse, and examples by J. Francis Murphy, L.P. Dessar, C. H. Davis, Blakelock and William H. Howe. Tabbagh Colection. The Tabbagh colelction contains more than 300 pieces and has been formed with rare knowledge and discrimination. The specimens of Saracenic art range from the ninth to the seventeenth century and include Persian faiences and the wares of Rhages, Rakka, Sultanabad, Koubatcha, Bokhara and Kashan. A Rakha vase of the twelfth century that was exhumed on the plain of El-Jaazireh a few months before the war is decorated with bands of sunken relief and covered entirely with a rich silvery iridescence. A Rakka mosque lamp of rectangular shape is still earlier in date, coming from the ninth century, and a bowl of eleventh century Rhages ware, from the point of view of paste, glaze and decoration, is exceptionally distinguished. There is a group of rare Rhodian plates and beakers that came from the Thomas B. Clarke collection and a group of Alexandrian glass bowls dating from the first century B.C. and of the kind known as Mosaic or blurrhine glass. The colors in them are both rich and subtle, as though the bowls were compounded of jewels. The rugs are mostly prayer rugs of fine texture and harmonious colors. One of them, a Ghiordes weave, has been especially fortunately mellowed by time and has an exceptional pattern. The Persian miniatures enable the student to form an idea of the best of this art. A portrait of Imam by a miniaturist of the Riza Abbasi school is drawn with astonishing realism. There is a signed painting by Mahomed el Khajin and one by the celebrated Riza Abbasi. They have been mounted with all the care that the Persians are wont to bestow upon such highly regarded works of art and are richly decorative. [[/Second Column]] [[Side Margin]] The Sun Sunday, March 25, 1917. [[/Side Margin]]
