Chauncey Foster Ryder was born in 1868 in Danbury, Connecticut, but grew up mainly in New Haven. He began studying painting as a boy and in his early twenties moved to Chicago to attend the Art Institute and then Smith's Academy. After only a year at the latter, he was hired as an instructor. In 1891, he married Mary Dole Keith. In 1901, the couple moved to Paris, France, where Ryder continued his art education, studying with Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian. Ryder stayed in France for several years, living in art colony at Étaples and exhibiting his work at the Paris Salon. He took on occasional students, including the American painter William Posey Silva. His developing style was influenced both by the dramatic compositions of his friend and fellow painter Max Bohm and by his admiration for the Japanese artist Hokusai.
Painting career
In 1907, Ryder moved to New York City, where he was represented throughout his career by the art dealer William Macbeth. His landscapes were admired for their vigorous brushwork and for the degree to which he pushed the representational elements towards abstraction. He became known for a palette that leaned towards gray-green tones, and this eventually gave rise to use of the term 'Ryder green' to describe his typical color scheme. Ryder was a prolific artist who painted in both oil and watercolor. Around 1910 he began making prints, including lithographs, etchings, and drypoints. His best drypoints exhibit great economy of line. Ryder opened a studio in the city in 1909, and the following year bought property in Wilton, New Hampshire. For the remainder of his life, he split his time between New York and New Hampshire. In 1910, he traveled throughout New England, which provided locales for many of his subsequent paintings. That same year, the future president Woodrow Wilson and his wife Ellen bought one of his landscapes, Valley of Assisi, to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Ryder was a member of several art associations, including the American Water Color Society and the Society for Sanity in Art. Among his awards are the following: the Paris Salon, the American Water Color Society, the National Arts Club, and the New York Water Color Society, plus awards at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Ryder died in Wilton in 1949 in Wilton, New Hampshire. His work is in the collections of numerous American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
