Grant Reynard
Historical Photo courtesy of Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer
Music and drawing were passions of young Grant Reynard from a very early age. Grant was born in Grand Island in 1887. His father owned a music store in Grand Island and Grant played the piano and sang at church and town functions as a young boy.
He started copying pictures of people from catalogs when he should have been setting up pins in the bowling alley at his first job outside the family business. He snuck around the business section of town drawing pictures of merchants and town characters bringing them to life using his 8th grade pencil and any paper he could get his hands on.
Grant went Chicago when he was 19 to attend school at the Chicago Art Institute. He became known as an artist with a sense of humor and compassion for humanity. He had a successful carreer as one of America's outstanding book and magazine illustrators.
Meeting Willa Cather, a well known Nebraska author, made a big impression on Grant Reynard. Cather told him that her writing improved when she started writing about her early Nebraska days. Grant took her advice and started exploring his personal experience in his paintings.
Later in his career, Grant's work changed from illustration to a concentration on his own creative work. He also began to travel a lot lecturing and teaching across the country. He would stop almost every summer to lecture and teach art classes in Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, North Platte, and Kearney. Reynard died in New Jersey, in 1968.
Grant Reynard's art gave us a record of the people and events during his lifetime. By showing his art around the world, he shared the Grand Island way of life.