Board Room of the Admiralty

Location

Country: USA
City: Washington DC
Place: British Embassy

William Bruce Ellis Ranken was born in Edinburgh in 1881 and studied at the Slade School of Art in London under Henry Tonks. Through his contact and friendship with the American painter, John Singer Sargent based in London at the time, Ranken received commissions from eminent American families, including the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts. He exhibited in Boston, New York and London, and was a member of the National Portrait Society and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Due to his success in America in the early 1920s, Ranken was able to purchase Warbrook House, a grand 18th-century house in Hampshire, where he lived the mid 1930s. After his death in 1941, a retrospective exhibition was held in New York.

Places

England, London, Admiralty, Whitehall

Subjects

bugle, vase (as Subject), painting (as Subject), ink pot/ink stand, paper (as Subject), book, topography, dividers, backstaff, compass, fan, clock, staff, fireplace, pillar (architectural feature), desk, carpet, chair, state interior, ship

Materials & Techniques

cardboard, oil, oil painting

Artist

William B E Ranken (1881 - 1941)

Title

Board Room of the Admiralty

Date

May & June 1918

Medium

Oil on cardboard

Dimensions

height: 77.80 cm, width: 57.70 cm

Acquisition

Presented by the artist's sister, 1944

Inscription

sdbl

Provenance

Presented to British Embassy, Washington, by artist's sister, 1944.

GAC number

15037