Chauncey F. Ryder (1868-1949)
Sand and Sky
Oil on canvas, 12 x 16”
Signed lower right

Ryder was born in Danbury. He lived in New Haven as a boy and later moved to Chicago. In 1901, he went to Paris. His work was accepted at the Paris Salon and promoted by the Macbeth Gallery in New York, one of only two then devoted to American art. He developed a style that, as one critic noted, was "not deterred by quibbling details."

When Ryder was in Old Lyme in 1910 and 1911, he was asked to paint a panel in Florence Griswold’s dining room, an honor the artists did not bestow lightly. Before he left town, he sold a painting to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, then a student in the colony.