The Regionalist Works of Grant Reynard

Born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1887, Grant Reynard began his young artistic career in his father’smusic store singing and playing the piano. 

Reynard went on to become one of the most prolific illustrators of his time with his work appearing in The Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, McCall’s, and Scribner’s Magazine, just to name a few. 

In his first of eight summers spent at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Reynard met the famous author, Willa Cather. It was during this meeting that Cather gave Reynard important advice regarding his artwork that he took to heart. She told him that when she first began her writing career in New York she relied heavily on her imagination; however, once she started writing based on her Nebraska experiences she gained true success. Reynard began creating work inspired by incidents from his own childhood growing up in central Nebraska. 

Later in his career, Reynard changed his focus from illustration to his own creative work. Traveling across the country to teach and lecture, Reynard returned almost every summer to Nebraska and conducted classes in communities throughout the state. Today, his work is held in collections of the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, NE), and the Museum of Nebraska Art (Kearney, NE). 

The exhibition The Regionalist Works of Grant Reynard is organized by the Museum of Nebraska Art through their ArtReach program.