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Grant Tyson Reynard was born October 20, 1887 to Stephen Blackstone Reynard and Jennie Lynd Bacon Reynard in Grand Island, Nebraska. As a young boy, Grant worked in his father's music store, became a skilled pianist, and sang solos at many church and town functions. Grant commented,

“I was provided with a measure of vision and portion of talent which I believe is a God-given desire put into man. Since my parents were musicians, I studied piano as a boy, but soon got a notion, out there in Grand Island, Nebraska, to have a try at putting down (with an eighth grade pencil and any paper handy) my interest in the world around me. I first copied Gibson girls out of the magazines up at the Elks Club where I was supposed to be setting pins in the bowling alley. After other early endeavors on the edges of my examination papers, which, by the way, boosted my stock with the teachers, I would invade the business section of town and, being a shy boy, hide behind posts or crates to draw the merchants and town characters. As I look now at those early drawings, I am amazed at how they bring the characters of that little prairie town to life, right into the here and now. They were drawn with ease and excitement, for I had no idea how difficult it was to make a figure. I sent $60 for a twelve-lesson art course out of Chicago, which promised that I might become famous. It wasn't until later that I found in the Chicago Art Institute how tough it was to draw, and how much there was to learn.”

In 1906, Reynard attended the Chicago Art Institute, working days at Marshall Field and studying at the Institute at night. He returned to Grand Island the following year where he worked in his father's music store and as a pianist in dance halls through 1908 to save money before returning to Chicago for further study. In 1909, Grant returned to the Chicago Art Institute to complete his education, remaining there until 1911. Reynard moved to Leonia, New Jersey, in 1914, to become a free-lance illustrator and attended the Harvey Dunn School of Illustration. It was here that he met and became lifelong friends with Dunn, Charles H. Chapman, Frank Street, John Steuart Curry, and Harry Wickey, all prominent artists. Of this period in his life, Reynard said,

“Eventually, I came east to Leonia, here in New Jersey, and joined a summer art class in illustration taught by Harvey Dunn who hailed from South Dakota. Sensing that I was a western lone wolf, he would send me out from the studio, and the other hard workers, with instructions to bring back drawings of people and places I could find up toward Fort Lee on the Palisades. I salute him for his good sense in not insisting that I follow him, and for helping me later to contact the magazines where my illustrations enabled me to make a living and to marry my Gwen who presented me in due time with two lovely young lady models.

In those early days, I met Harry Wickey who gave me my first insight and appreciation of Daumier, Goya, Rembrandt, and the great line of draftsmen-painters that he admired and studied. I found Wickey a great and generous artist and friend whose counsel and inspiration continue to serve me to this day. We met Mahonri Young who was living in Leonia and we felt that his knowledge of media and just about everything connected with art was endless. In their various ways, these three artist friends were most helpful and, with their encouragement, I began to raise my sights toward fields other than illustration where I might paint just the things I wanted in the way I wanted. In those days of the 1920s, what a group of men there was both painting and doing illustration: Sloan, Glackens, Shinn, and Bellows, to name only a few.”

In 1915, Reynard became Art Editor for Redbook Magazine in Chicago. He continued creating illustrations for Redbook until 1924. From 1924 to 1929, he was active as an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post (Reynard completed nearly 50 pieces for the Post), Country Gentleman, Ladies' Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Hearst's International Magazine, Collier's, McCall's, Woman's Home Companion, Liberty, and Scribner's Magazine. Most of these illustrations were created in the charcoal medium.

In 1928 Reynard spent his first of eight summers at the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire. It was here that he met Willa Cather. Reynard recalled, “Willa Cather, the distinguished writer and a fellow Nebraskan, came to my studio one afternoon. On viewing my paintings − I had been doing a series of large-scale allegorical canvases − she gave me some advice I never forgot.” Miss Cather told Reynard that, in her early career as an author in New York, she had written stories based on imagination, but that it was not until she returned in retrospect to the scenes of her childhood in Nebraska that she found herself as a novelist. Reynard got the point. For the balance of that summer, he turned to writing and illustrating incidents from his own background, several of which, at the urging of his fellow colonists, he sent on to Scribner's where they were published. Reynard said, “It was a turning event in my career. I made the break from illustration and editors to the free world of drawing, painting, and printmaking. From the late twenties to this day, I have created only for myself, without concern for an audience. Nothing but the great pleasure of doing the drawing or painting has been in my mind as I have worked. In many cases I have labored long hours or days over a problem but I am not sure that it should be called work. ” (Grant Reynard, A Measure of Vision, May, 1966.)

Reynard had thirteen published articles from 1927 to 1972 in magazines such as American Artists, Scribner's Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1941 he wrote, illustrated, and published a book of poetry, Rattling Home for Christmas. Reynard also became active in creating war propaganda materials the same year for “Artists for Victory” and continued to create images for the group until the end of the war. After the war, Reynard continued to complete illustrations and articles for the Ford Motor Company ($75 per watercolor and $15 to $20 for sketches) and West Kentucky Coal Company and, in 1948, Grant created thirty-three illustrations in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

In the middle to late 1950s, his work began to shift increasingly from illustration to a greater concentration on his own creative work and he also began to travel extensively and to lecture and teach across the country. Reynard returned to Nebraska almost every summer to conduct a series of lectures and art classes in Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, Kearney, and North Platte before heading off to Colorado and the mountains. Grant Reynard died in Leonia, New Jersey, in 1968.

The Museum of Nebraska Art holds over 3,000 works by Grant Reynard along with archival material, the largest single collection of his work.

Artist quotes have been taken from A Measure of Vision, May, 1966.

Revised 2009