Chauncey Foster Ryder (1868–1949) was an early 20th century American Postimpressionist landscape painter known for a green-gray palette termed 'Ryder green'.

Ryder was born in 1868 in Danbury, Connecticut, but grew up mainly in New Haven.  He began studying painting as a boy and in his early twenties moved to Chicago to attend the Art Institute and then Smith's Academy.  After only a year at the latter, he was hired as an instructor.

In 1891 he married Mary Dole Keith and In 1901, the couple sold their belongings and  moved to Paris, France, where Ryder continued his art education, studying with Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian. Ryder stayed in France for several years, living in art colony at Étaples and exhibiting his work at the Paris Salon (1903–1909).  He took on occasional students, including the American painter William Posey Silva.  His developing style was influenced both by the dramatic compositions of his friend and fellow painter Max Bohm and by his admiration for the Japanese artist Hokusai.

In 1910, he traveled throughout New England, which provided locales for many of his subsequent paintings. That same year, the future president Woodrow Wilson and his wife Ellen bought one of his landscapes, Valley of Assisi, to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary

Ryder was a member of several art associations, including the American Water Color Society and the Society for Sanity in Art. Among his awards are the following: the Paris Salon (honorable mention, 1907), the American Water Color Society (gold medal), the National Arts Club (gold medal), and the New York Water Color Society (gold medal), plus awards at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and the 1937 Paris International Exposition.

Ryder died in Wilton in 1949 in Wilton, New Hampshire.  His work is in the collections of numerous American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), the Art Institute of Chicago (Illinois), and the Baltimore Museum of Art (Maryland).

Biography taken from Wikipedia