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.

[1] That same year, The New York Times identified him as "a promising young Philadelphia painter," and wrote approvingly of his illustrations for a new edition of The Night Before Christmas.

[3] He studied further at the Académie Julian in Paris, where his teachers included Évariste Vital Luminais and William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

He painted hunting scenes in England in 1893, including Queen Victoria's stag hounds at Ascot Heath.

He exhibited In Holland, The End of the Trail and A Frosty Morning at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, and was awarded a silver medal.

[9] 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".