Ep 45: Artist William Ranney and How Texas Shaped the American Identity.
Wise About Texas
Ken Wise
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
William Ranney was one of the first American artists to capture the legendary characters, events and spirit of the American west. One critic pointed out that he was the only artist who had the first hadn’t experience to paint scenes of the west. Where did he get that experience? Texas of course! Ranney had served in the Texas Army from May through November of 1836. After this time in Texas, Ranney returned east and became a prolific painter of the things he had seen. he also produced a large body of genre paintings that began to shape the collective identity of America. He painted the American revolution as its history was just being formed in the minds of his audience. He painted the early trappers and mountain men that blazed the trails for western expansion. He captured many scenes of the pioneer families that truly settled the west and fulfilled the manifest destiny of America. Learn a little about William Ranney and the shaping of the American identity in the latest episode of Wise About Texas.
Tory Escort
Veterans Returning from War 1776.
The Wounded Trapper
The Pioneers. Note the spotlight on the Wife/Mother on the white horse.
The Fowler’s Return.
Recruiting for the Continental Army
Prairie Burial. One of my favorites despite its sadness. The survivors persevere.
The Pipe of Friendship
Marion Crossing the Peedee. One of the early heroes of the American Revolution.
Trapper’s Last Shot.
First News of Lexington.
Crossing the Ferry
Boone’s First View of Kentucky
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the Texas History Podcast. This is your host G Ginn Wise, and I'm going to thank you very much |
| 0:14.9 | for tuning in for a little bit of Texas history today. Now most of y'all that have listened to |
| 0:19.7 | this podcast for some length of time know that the World Headquarters of |
| 0:23.4 | Wise about Texas is in Houston which is also home of the Astros who were |
| 0:27.2 | World Series bound after crushing the New York Yankees last night at home and everyone in Houston is very excited about that. |
| 0:35.6 | We hope that they're going to make a little Astros history, a little Houston history and a little Texas history. |
| 0:40.6 | So good luck Astros. |
| 0:41.7 | I also want to thank everybody for is We're well over 132,000 downloads in 67 different countries and I continue to be amazed and |
| 0:58.1 | grateful that y'all enjoy Texas history as much as I do. We're going to take a little bit of a turn in this |
| 1:05.4 | week's episode and I had the opportunity to present a speech at a |
| 1:11.3 | symposium last week at Houston Baptist University, which dealt with art and the American |
| 1:17.4 | West and how our Western art shaped our views of the West and the American identity. |
| 1:25.0 | And today I'm going to talk about the subject of my presentation who was an artist named |
| 1:30.0 | William Ranny. |
| 1:31.0 | Now I will confess that I didn't know a lot about William Rani |
| 1:34.3 | when I was asked to present on his life and how his art shaped the American |
| 1:38.4 | identity but I found an interesting connection to Texas that it turns out |
| 1:42.0 | really helped influence his art and in turn |
| 1:45.4 | influence the entire way that Americans saw themselves through art in the |
| 1:51.8 | middle 1800s and it really does make for an interesting |
| 1:55.1 | story and shows how even in its earliest stages Texas really did help shape the American identity. So we're going to go back to the early middle 1800s and |
| 2:08.4 | get wise about Texas. Now I'm going to have to start this off by saying that I certainly know art that I enjoy looking at and art I don't think is so good, but art has never been one of the things that I know a lot about. I've had a class in art history in high school because it was a requirement, not because it was an elective. |
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