Ransome Gillet Holdredge -French Countryside Old Village -19th Century Oil Painting

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Ransome Gillet Holdredge -French Countryside Old Village -19th century Oil painting

Impressionist oil painting on canvas - signed - dated … Read more Ransome Gillet Holdredge -French Countryside Old Village -19th century Oil painting

Impressionist oil painting on canvas - signed - dated 1875 - titled to gallery label verso

Canvas size: 18x22" - Frame size 26x30"

Artist Biography
Ransome Gillet Holdredge (1836 - 1899) was active/lived in California. He is known for Idealized landscape, Indian life, and marine painting.
Ransome Holdredge was an itinerant painter who widely traveled in the Pacific Northwest while living with the Native Americans. He was best known for a career painting Indian genre in idealistic landscapes.Holdredge was born in New York City in 1836. He became a resident of San Francisco in the 1850's, where he worked as a draftsman and with the Mare Island Navy Yard. After his service in the Navy, he passed through the Northwest painting amongst the Indians.In 1874, he began two years of study in France where he was significantly influenced by the Barbizon School of Impressionist painters. Holdredge already had a degree of Hudson River School training before his stay in Europe. Instead of canvases that emphasized the splendor of nature and Indians in serene existence, the Barbizons expounded on a countrified, French Impressionistic style of landscape.Upon his return to San Francisco his highly unembellished style had become more painterly. Back in California and the Bay region he won acclaim and notoriety as a superb painter. His work was even considered to be better than that of the famous William Keith. In California he received recognition for his works of Vernal Falls and other Sierra Views, in addition to Bay Area scenes. Holdredge also picked up work as a staff artist at the Scribner's magazine and was said to have covered the Custer Massacre. He was on assignment with further U.S. troops near the Little Big Horn area when the General was killed. Holdredge was a co-founder of the San Francisco Art Association and a member of the Bohemian Club.During the 1880's Holdredge traveled the American West extensively, living and painting for long periods amongst various Indian tribes in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and Northern Canada. Paintings from this time period often times depict mountain and prairie landscapes with Indians as well as Native American portraits. He was also known to have produced a small number of seascapes during this period.Although Ransom Holdredge won wide acclaim as an artist in San Francisco during the 1880's, placing him on par with other distinguished painters, his abilities declined significantly in the 1890's due to alcoholism. He died in poverty in April of 1899 in Almeda County Infirmary from alcoholism and malnutrition. His earlier works from the 1860's and 1870's were usually signed with only his last name.

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