Crane, Bruce (American, 1857-1937) Oil Painting. Old Stone Well in Winter. Oil on canvas. Painting appears to be late 19th or early 20th century. Painting is signed faintly with a partial “Bruce Crane” lower left. Close-up forensic photo of signature provided. The painting was cleaned at one time, which slightly removed part of the signature. The painting is from the same East Hampton estate as the American “Autumn Scene with Stone Wall” (manner of Bruce Crane) painting (lot # 6) in this sale. In good condition, craquelure in the sky. Image measures 12” x 16”. Modern gilt frame measures 20” x 23 ”.

From Askart: Robert Bruce Crane was born in New York City on October 17, 1857. The son of Solomon Bruce Crane and Leah Gillespie, he was educated in New York's public schools and was exposed to the city's galleries and museums by his father, himself an amateur painter. By the age of seventeen, Crane had moved to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he was employed as a draftsman by an architect and builder. He soon decided to devote his career to painting, and in 1876 or 1877 he sought the guidance of the landscape painter Alexander H. Wyant, with whom he subsequently shared a close friendship until Wyant's death in 1892. Between 1878 and 1882, Crane attended the Art Students League in New York and traveled to Europe for further study. In the United States during this period, he painted in New Jersey, East Hampton, Long Island, and the Adirondacks. He wrote to his father from the Adirondacks that among the influential painters working nearby at the time were Eastman Johnson, George and James Smillie, and Samuel Coleman. He described the dramatic terrain: "Went to the famous Rainbow Falls which several artists have tried to paint . . . Wyant and Hart among them . . . over the top comes tumbling the water which strikes every few feet throwing a spray which catches the sun giving a most charming as well as wonderful appearance." Crane spent time in East Hampton, on the eastern end of Long Island, during the summer of 1880 or 1881 and possibly during other summers. In these early works, Crane painstakingly reproduced the pastures, hayfields, and barnyards of rural East Hampton. A critic later remarked that, "Troubled or placid skies, the bright luminous atmosphere of a summer's day, or the gray tones of autumn were given in these pictures, not only with truth to nature and a certain poetic sentiment, but with a brilliant sparkling quality of effect.” After 1904, Crane spent many of his summers in the popular artist's colony of Old Lyme, Connecticut. In 1915, he joined with Emil Carlsen, Charles Davis, and J. Alden Weir to establish Twelve Landscape Painters, an exhibiting organization of artists. He died in Bronxville, New York in 1937. Crane was a member of the American Watercolor Society, Artists' Fund Society, National Academy of Design, Lotus Club, Salmagundi Club, Society of American Artists, and the Union Internationale des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres. His paintings are found in the Brooklyn Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the National Museum of American Art, among many others.