William Tylee Ranney (1813–1857)

When William Tylee Ranney's Radish Girl was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1845, the reviewer for the Anglo American praised, "a pretty idea very well carried out; the wretched poverty of the drapery, the broken straw hat, are both in good keeping." (Anglo American, May 17, 1845, p. 93) Linda Bantel explains, "The straw hat may have been a prop in Ranney's studio, for a tattered one is also depicted on the head of his Match Boy [Private Collection], painted in 1845 and exhibited at the National Academy in 1846." (Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney, with a Catalogue of His Works, Cody, Wyoming, 2006, p. 17)