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Specializing in 19th - 21st Century American & European Art.  Learn more >

Established in 1976, Mary Ran Gallery, a Fine Art Gallery, has contributed greatly to the local and global 19th - 21st century American and European art market. Our gallery is located in Cincinnati, Ohio's historic neighborhood, Hyde Park, on Erie Avenue. Our mission is to bring to our clientele and artists alike an experience that is as brilliant as the pieces that we carry in our gallery setting.

Featured Works

EDWARD HENRY POTTHAST

A Cincinnati Impressionist (1857-1927)

American Impressionist Edward Henry Potthast is best known for sunny beach scenes, filled with sparkling surf and high-keyed details such as balloons, hats and umbrellas. He was born to a family of artisans in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 10, 1857. At age twelve he became a charter student at Cincinnati’s new McMicken School of Design. He studied at McMicken, off and on, for over a decade. From 1879 to 1881, his teacher was Thomas Satterwhite Noble. 

He enjoyed modest success in Cincinnati, but still made the decision to leave Cincinnati in 1895 and establish himself in New York City. While he went about setting up a painting studio, he fulfilled illustration commissions for the publications Scribner's, Century, and Harper's.  He exhibited watercolors and oil paintings in exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago beginning in 1896, and at the National Academy of Design from 1897.  He won the academy's Thomas B. Clarke prize for best figure painting in 1899, the same year was he was elected an associate of the academy.  Potthast was made a full academician in 1906.

After his move to New York, Potthast began making the scenes he became most known for: people enjoying leisurely holidays at the beach and rocky harbor views. He spent summer months in any one of a number of seaside art colonies, including Gloucester, Rockport and Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and Ogunquit and Monhegan Island, Maine.

The paintings of Edward Henry Potthast are represented in public collections across the United States, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Art Institute of Chicago; Cincinnati Art Museum; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

BESSIE HOOVER WESSEL

(1889 - 1973)

Born in Brookville, Indiana on January 7, 1889, Bessie Wessel moved to Cincinnati as a youngster. She received encouragement to pursue a career in art from her father, a school teacher. In 1906, she enrolled in the Cincinnati Art Academy, first studying with Lewis Henry Meakin and then Herman Wessel. Frank Duveneck invited her to join his classes, which she attended from 1909 to 1915. She became a frequent exhibitor of her portraits, still-lifes, landscapes and miniatures which she painted on ivory.

From 1917 to 1919, she was President of the Women's Art Club. In 1915, she joined the faculty of the Art Academy, but worked so hard she became overly tired and resigned two years later. However, while teaching she got to know her colleague and future husband Herman Wessel. The two were married in August of 1917 at the home of Frank Duveneck, their favorite teacher and friend. Two years later, Duveneck died, which caused the couple great mutual sorrow. After his death, Bessie and her husband became the acknowledged experts on authenticating Duveneck paintings.

Paul Sawyier

(1865 - 1917)

Paul Sawyier was the best impressionist painter in Kentucky at the turn of the 19th century. Sawyier was born at Table Rock in Madison County, Ohio on March 23, 1865, on his Grandfather Sawyier's farm. When he was five years old, his parents, Dr. Nathaniel and Ellen Wingate Sawyier, moved with their four children to Frankfort, Kentucky.

Paul Sawyier's artistic talent became apparent during his early years. At the age of 19, in 1884, Sawyier studied portraiture under Thomas S. Noble at the Cincinnati Art Academy. After the Academy, Paul briefly held a job as a hemp salesman, but the pull of art proved irresistible. Sawyier went to New York City for further training at the Art Student's League. In 1889 and 1890, he studied under William Merritt Chase and was able to observe the famous portrait painter John Singer Sargent. In 1890, Sawyier studied for a year under Frank Duveneck, in Covington, Kentucky, who was at the height of his national fame as an oil portrait painter. Chase and Duveneck were friends and had painted together in Europe.

In 1893, Sawyier went to the Chicago World's Fair Colombian Exhibition where some of his works were in the State of Kentucky display. It was at this exhibition that Impressionism was formally introduced in the United States, and Sawyier, influenced to become an "American Impressionist" became one of the few proponents of Impressionism in Kentucky. He also found his first taste of real popularity in 1893. A covered bridge he had captured in a series of copperplate etchings was closed, and suddenly those etchings were much in demand.

Since 1940, Sawyier exhibits have been held at Eastern Kentucky University, Maysville Museum, Georgetown College, University of Kentucky, Kentucky Historical Society, Paul Sawyier Galleries, Inc. (Frankfurt, Kentucky), and twice at the J.B. Speed Museum and Shakertown Village. Four volumes have been written about Sawyier's life and works. These books are all based on the research of historian Dr. W. R. Jillson, who in the late 1930's, talked with surviving Sawyier family members and any individuals who personally knew Paul Sawyier.