Although the Lyme Art Colony is famous for the painted panels the artists created for the boardinghouse dining room, they also worked on canvas. Canvas begins as a woven fabric most commonly made out of cotton, linen, or burlap (linen canvas has proven to last longer than the others making it a common choice). The canvas is cut from the bolt of fabric and stretched taut over a wooden frame and stapled or nailed in place. The surface needs to be sized (or sealed), so that the fibers of the cloth won’t absorb the moisture in the paint, and then primed with a base coat to provide a ground to paint upon. Grounds are often white but can be tinted any color. Henry Ward Ranger would start with a white ground but add a transparent yellow glaze in order to begin with a color that is “most suggestive of sunlight.” 

“A smooth surface also makes it possible to preserve the textures created by the brush from the very start; therefore you do not waste time in filling up the textures existing in coarser canvas. A panel gives a perfectly satisfactory surface to paint on; but I confess to a personal predilection for the elastic give of a canvas over the unyielding surface of wood.”

~ Artist Henry Ward Ranger, 1914

The artists would prepare the wood panels in a similar fashion, although on occasion they would let the natural color of the wood inform the later painting.

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