Henry Rankin Poore

Henry Rankin Poore (1859–1940) was an American painter and illustrator, known for incorporating human and animal figures into his landscape and genre paintings. He was also a lecturer and critic, and a prolific author on art and composition.

Painter and teacher Poore was born on March 21, 1859, in Newark, New Jersey, to Rev. Daniel Warren Poore and Susan Helen Poore née Ellis. He spent his childhood in California and then studied at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1883.

Poore studied privately with Peter Moran in Philadelphia, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins, and then at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He studied further at the Académie Julian in Paris, where his teachers included Évariste Vital Luminais and William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Returning to the United States, he opened a studio in Philadelphia, shared with illustrator Joseph Pennell. Poore had gone on summer sketching trips to the American Southwest during college, and some of his illustrations were used in The Story of the American Indian (1887). He returned to New Mexico in 1891, sponsored by the U.S. government, to study the Pueblo Indians and report on their living conditions. One critic wrote of a retrospective of his works: "In his long career ... he wielded a versatile brush and his exhibition reveals a catholicity of view which embraces with equal enthusiasm the hunting field, the New England farmer and the character revealed by the face before the portrait painter." He lectured at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts beginning in 1904.

The National Academy elected Poore an associate member in 1888.

Author Poore published Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures in 1903, which he described as a "handbook for students and lovers of art". He recommended both painters and photographers consider how to use the fundamental forms he presented to draw the viewer "into the picture", including, in one critic's summary, "left-right balance and the aesthetic application of triangles, circles, crosses, S-curves, and rectangles". A century later, a critic wrote that the volume "still provides a thoughtful analysis of composition".

Writings He published under the name Henry R. Poore. Art's Place in Education Art Principles in Practice Figure Composition Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures (NY: Baker and Taylor, 1903) The Conception of Art (Putnam's, 1914) Modern Art: Why, What and How? (Knickerbocker Press, 1931) The New Tendency in Art: Post Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism

Personal Poore married Katherine Goodnow Stevens of Worcester, Massachusetts, on June 30, 1896. He died in Orange, New Jersey, on August 15, 1940, after a long illness.