Henry Rankin Poore (Pennsylvania, Connecticut, 1859 – 1940)

Henry Rankin Poore (Pennsylvania, Connecticut, 1859 – 1940) Important painting titled “Arcadian Hunt”. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated lower left. Sight Size: 28 x 51.5 in. Overall Size: 32 x 56 in. Poore studied for a year at the National Academy of Design in New York City, then until 1880 with Peter Moran at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. During this period he sold some illustration work to Harper’s Weekly; he also traveled in the West with Moran, painting in the Colorado mining country and in Taos, NM. He went to Paris, France, in 1883 and studied further there with Evariste Vital Luminais and William Adolphe Bouguereau. After a tour of Europe, Poore began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1888, while an Associate of the National Academy, he painted a composition of polo, The Opening Charge, Hutton Park. Poore, along with William Gaul, Peter Moran, Julian Scott and Walter Shirlaw was commissioned by the US government to take a census of the Native American population in 1890; their findings, including illustrations by the artists, was entitled Report on Indians Taxed and Not Taxed. Poore was a member of the National Academy of Design, the Society of Animal Painters and Sculptors, the Salmagundi Club, the Lotos Club, the American Federation of Artists, and the National Arts Club, all in New York City; the Lyme (CT) Art Association; the Union International des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres in Paris; and other societies. He received medals at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY, in 1901; the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, MO, in 1904; the American Art Society in New York City in 1906; Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1910; and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, CA, in 1915. At the National Academy of Design he showed such works as his Burro Train Leaving the Pueblo of Taos in 1882, Hounds in the Brush in 1892, Winter Shepherd in 1906, and Mrs. Allen Potts of Virginia: Her Horses and Hounds in 1911.