Bruce Crane

Robert Bruce Crane (1857 – October 30, 1937) was an American painter. He joined the Lyme Art Colony in the early 1900s. His most active period, though, came after 1920, when for more than a decade he did oil sketches of woods, meadows, and hills. He developed into a Tonalist painter under the influence of Jean-Charles Cazin at Grez-sur-Loing. Crane’s mature works were nearly always fall and winter scenes. He usually painted in his studio in Bronxville, New York, where like many of the Tonalists he relied mostly on memories of his outdoor sketching experiences. Selected work can be found at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut. He is a descendant of the Continental Congressman Stephen Crane.

Bruce Crane's father, Solomon Crane, was an amateur artist himself and interested his son in the New York art scene from a young age. However, it would be a summer trip to the Adirondacks that piqued Bruce's interest in painting after witnessing “a lot of young lady amateur (artists.)” At the age of seventeen around 1874 he moved with his family to Elizabeth New Jersey where he worked as a draftsman for an architect. In hopes of starting a career in this field, he approached the famous artist Alexander Wyant and asked to start an apprenticeship with him. Wyant asked to see some of Crane's work, but Bruce did not believe that his skills were adequate enough to impress Wyant. Therefore, he declined the request and spent the next year improving his skills before he showed his work to Wyant and began to work with him. They remained friends until Wyant's death.

Bruce Crane began to then study at New York's Arts Student League and in 1876 he was featured for the first time in an exhibit at the National academy of design, submitting his painting called Old Swedish Church, Philadelphia."

In his promotional book "A Souvenir of Cranford" (1894), the architect and artist Frank Townsend Lent discusses Crane's depictions of the Rahway River in Cranford, New Jersey:

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