Albert Ryder, Paintings

Christ Appearing to Mary

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21443
1885
 oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard
 14 1/4 x 17 1/4 in. (36.1 x 43.8 cm)
 Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly
“I can not but feel in some way that in . . . the Religious picture [Christ Appearing to Mary] I have gone a little higher up on the mountain and can see other peaks showing along the horizon.” Ryder to Thomas B. Clarke, quoted in Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989
Albert Pinkham Ryder traveled to Europe in 1877 and 1882 to study the art of the European masters. He was inspired to paint many religious subjects, including this image of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene. Ryder asked one of his friends to model for the figure of Jesus, but his friend felt that because he was “stout and muscular . . . the figure would look rather healthy for a man that had been in the grave three days.” Ryder was unconcerned, replying that the painting of Jesus “should show power as well as spirituality.” X-rays of the image, however, show that he did alter the figure’s arm and chest slightly to make them appear slimmer. (Fitzpatrick, quoted in Taylor, “Ryder Remembered,” in Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)

Dancing Dryads  

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21444

1879
 oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard
 9 x 7 1/8 in. (22.8 x 18.0 cm)
 Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly

“In the morning, ashen-hued,

Came nymphs dancing through the wood.”

Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1881, quoted in Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989
Many American painters in the nineteenth century painted nature as a classical world of dryads, nymphs, and other imaginary creatures. Albert Pinkham Ryder was inspired by a painting by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot that shows dancing figures in an atmospheric, intimate landscape. In Dancing Dryads, Ryder added many layers of paint and glaze to create a thick, enamel-like surface that emphasized the glowing colors and dreamlike scene. Over time, however, the colors faded and an early restorer actually added the outlines around the figures to prevent them from disappearing into the background. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)

Florizel and Perdita
by 1887

http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21445
oil on canvas
12 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. (31.1 x 18.4 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
1929.6.94
Albert Pinkham Ryder painted several images based on plays by William Shakespeare. His favorite play was The Winter’s Tale, and this small image shows the characters Prince Florizel and the shepherd girl Perdita, who he was forbidden to marry. They discovered that Perdita was actually the banished daughter of a king, however, and the lovers were reunited. Ryder never married and constantly mourned the absence of love in his life. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989) He may have been comparing himself to Prince Florizel and hoping that he, too, would fall in love with a “princess.”


Flying Dutchman

completed by 1887  
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21446
oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard 14 1/4 x 17 1/4 in. (36.1 x 43.8 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly 1929.6.95 Smithsonian American Art Museum
2nd Floor, East Wing 
Who hath seen the Phantom Ship, Her lordly rise and lowly dip, Careering o'er the lonesome main No port shall know her keel again. . . . Ah, woe is in the awful sight, The sailor finds there eternal night, 'Neath the waters he shall ever sleep, And Ocean will the secret keep. Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1897
Please, make sure to open the link below,
It's 4 pages long but you can actually listen to it. It's easy and fast
http://americanart.si.edu/multimedia/tours/directors/ryder/
Harvest
n.d.
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21447
oil on canvas
26 x 35 3/4 in. (66.0 x 90.8 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly

Albert Pinkham Ryder never relied on sketches before he started work on a painting and instead applied large areas of color with quick, expressive strokes of the palette knife. In this unfinished painting, we can see where he changed the composition simply by painting his latest idea over previous attempts. He altered the direction of the hay cart and decided it should be pulled by oxen instead of horses. We can still see the faint outline of a horse behind the wheels, while the oxen are just blocked in with a reddish-brown wash. This painting is a rare glimpse of the early stages of Ryder's work, before he began the painstaking process of adding layer upon layer of translucent glaze. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)

In the Stable
before 1911

http://americanart.si.edu/luce/object.cfm?key=338&artistmedia=0&subkey=1088
oil on canvas
21 x 32 in. (53.3 x 81.3 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
"I have been working to get my paint less painty looking than any man who went before me . . ." Ryder, Wood diary no. 6, August 1896, Wood Papers, Huntington Library, quoted in Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989
Albert Pinkham Ryder painted with a "wet-on-wet" technique, by adding new layers of thick paint and varnish before the previous ones had a chance to dry. This overloaded the work to such an extent that one visitor described his work as a "boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly," and some paintings are still soft a hundred years later. At one point, In the Stable was covered with a network of cracks known as alligatoring, the worst of which have since been filled by a conservator. The white horse in the image was modeled after Ryder’s horse Charley, which he owned as a child in New Bedford, Massachusetts. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)

Jonah

Jonah
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21449
ca. 1885-1895
oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard

  27 1/4 x 34 3/8 in. (69.2 x 87.3 cm.)
  Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly
Jonah is one of Ryder's most densely painted canvases. He reworked this image so many times that the paint layers are still soft to the touch after more than a century. Ryder chose a Biblical tale of damnation, terror, and salvation that suited his poetic temperament and his manner of working. He was a thoughtful and literate painter who often found himself waiting for inspiration to strike. When the moment came, Ryder gave himself over to the act of painting, stopping only to gather his energy and courage. We imagine his brush sweeping and turning through the thick paint, much as Jonah struggled in the ocean’s pitching waves. American artists a generation later were inspired by Ryder's mythic themes and vigorous painting. His example helped them to create a new art for the American century. The abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock once said, "The only American master who interests me is Ryder."


 Jonah unites Ryder's favorite themes of damnation and redemption with his love of the sea. When Jonah defied God's order to go to Nineveh, a great storm threatened to capsize his ship. His terrified companions threw him overboard into the jaws of a great fish. Ryder's tumultuous, churning composition, with its overpowering waves filling the canvas almost to the top, expresses his own sense of abandonment and despair as he sought in vain to take control of his life in middle age. Redemption, he felt, rested in the hands of a forgiving God, who here spreads his cloud-wings over the desperate scene below.

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid

by 1906 or 1907
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21450
oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard
  24 1/2 x 18 in. (62.2 x 45.7 cm)
  Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly
 
King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid may have been commissioned by the art collector John Gellatly, who was an enthusiastic supporter of contemporary American art around the turn of the twentieth century. Albert Pinkham Ryder worked on this painting for more than five years, and x-rays of the canvas show that it was painted over two other images. Ryder was inspired by the story of King Cophetua from an Elizabethan ballad that tells of love overcoming all odds. In the tale, a king of Africa falls in love with a beautiful young beggar maid and marries her, despite her lowly status. Ryder was a hopeless romantic and believed wholeheartedly in love at first sight. In this painting he chose the scene when the king first notices the young girl to show that people’s lives could change in just one moment. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989) 


With Sloping Mast and Dipping Prow
about 1880–85
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21460
oil
12 x 12 in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a tale of salvation through forgiveness, inspired the first of Ryder's epic seascapes. The curved shape of the boat's sail begins a rhythmic pattern that continues through the upward-drifting night-sky clouds, creating a composition that slowly orbits around a glowing moon.

Lord Ullin's Daughter

before 1907
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21452
 oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard
  20 1/2 x 18 3/8 in. (52.0 x 46.7 cm.)
  Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly
A Scottish chieftain and his lover flee her wrathful father, but their defiance leads to their deaths in a surging, moonstruck sea. Ryder portrays Thomas Campbell's romantic poem as a scene of mystery, terror, and high drama—just the right combination for the tastes of Gilded Age America.





Moonlight
1887
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21453
 oil on mahogany panel, cradled
  15 7/8 x 17 3/4 in. (40.4 x 45.0 cm)
  Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of William T. Evans

Panel for a Screen: Children Frightened by a Rabbit
ca. 1876
oil on gilded leather mounted on canvas
  38 1/2 x 20 1/4 in. (97.7 x 51.4 cm.)
  Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly
During the 1870s and 1880s, Albert Pinkham Ryder became friends with the art dealer Daniel Cottier, who commissioned him to paint several leather panels as decorations for furniture. These three panels for a folding screen tell the story of Genevieve of Brabant, who was wrongfully expelled from her home and abandoned in a forest where her young child was nursed by a doe. Ryder frequently returned to the theme of naive innocence, to express his romantic view of women. A layer of gold underneath these images shines through the translucent colors to create a rich, luminous finish that evokes the artist’s idealism. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)

Passing Song

before 1902
 http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21457
oil on wood
8 1/2 x 4 3/8 in. (21.6 x 11.1 cm) 
Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly

Please open the 3 media links for passing song.

http://www.americanart.si.edu/luce/object.cfm?key=338&artistmedia=0&subkey=1728

In the mid-1890s, Albert Pinkham Ryder was infatuated with a voice he heard in his apartment building. He found the woman who was singing and immediately asked her to marry him. His friends intervened, saying that the woman was unsuitable, but Ryder immortalized the event by painting images of beautiful women bewitching men with their songs. In Passing Songthe sailor wants to approach the woman but is unable to turn his rudderless boat as it drifts away with the current. This helpless figure probably symbolizes the artist, who felt passionately about women and fell in love easily, but never married. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)

"By a deep flowing river

There's a maiden pale,
And her ruby lips quiver
A song on the gale,
A wild note of longing
Entranced to hear,
A wild song of longing
Falls sad on the ears."
Albert Pinkham Ryder, quoted in Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989

 http://americanart.si.edu/luce/media.cfm?key=372&artistmedia=0&object=1728&subkey=73
http://americanart.si.edu/luce/media.cfm?key=372&artistmedia=0&object=1728&subkey=1080
 http://americanart.si.edu/luce/media.cfm?key=372&artistmedia=0&object=1728&subkey=1234

The Lorelei

ca. 1896 - 1917  
http://americanart.si.edu/luce/object.cfm?key=338&artistmedia=0&subkey=226865
oil on canvas
22 1/2 x 19 1/4 in. (57.2 x 48.9 cm)
  Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's distinguished collection of works by Albert Pinkham Ryder, who has long been considered one of America's greatest romantic painters, is one of the strengths of the museum's extensive Gilded Age material. Together, these works illuminate one of the rare talents of American art. Separately, they provide enchanting glimpses into Ryder's world of literary figures and poetic metaphors.


The Lorelei, one of the painter's larger canvases, is the only painting by Ryder that links love and death in a way so intriguing to late nineteenth-century artists, poets, and musicians. Ryder based his work on Heinrick Heine's famous poem in which Lorelei was an evil seductress, similar to the Greek siren. She lived atop a high rock along the treacherous narrows of the Rhine River. With her irresistible song, she enchanted passing sailors, who strove to reach her. Here a sailor tries to steer his craft toward the nymph on the rock but is sucked to his death in whirlpools and rapids, as are all others. Heine's The Lorelei was translated and widely published in America and put to music by numerous composers. Ryder quite possibly was familiar with Friedrich Silcher's popular melody of the verse, for friends often heard him "sing the song of the Lorelei" while working on the painting during his night sessions.


Ryder was obsessed with this dark and brooding scene, which he worked over more than any of his other paintings. The tragic scene and his inability to let it go may in fact symbolize Ryder's realization that he was never to find a woman to love. From the mid-1890s until his death in 1917, he strove for the perfection of his inner vision, even though he pronounced the painting "finished" in 1896. Visitor after visitor remarked on the constantly changing position of Lorelei within the painting.


The Lorelei originally was intended for Helen Ladd Corbett, daughter of Portland, Oregon, banker William Ladd and a close friend of Charles Erskine Scott Wood, one of Ryder's major patrons who acted as intermediary. Mrs. Corbett even paid for it, but never received the painting. For unknown reasons the painting went to Wood after the artist's death and remained in the Wood family until 1957. Alastair Martin purchased The Lorelei in 1959, and his son, Robin Martin, gave the painting to the museum in 2011. In 2005, Alastair Martin presented the museum with Ryder's early, small painting The Lovers' Boat,
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=74942
depicting two blissful lovers in romantic moonlit and suggesting the painter’s optimism towards finding love. Thus, Ryder comes full circle in these two paintings.


  The tale of the Lorelei became popular in the mid-nineteenth century when German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) penned a poem about her, which a number of composers set to music. Ryder's image is based on the second and third stanzas of the poem (above), and his friends reported that he sang "the song of the Lorelei" while working on this painting. According to German folklore, the Lorelei is an evil seductress who lives on a large rock above the Rhine River. Much like the sirens of Greek mythology, she beguiles sailors with her singing, luring their ships to destruction. There actually exists such a rock, marking the river's narrowest point between the North Sea and Sweden. The strong current and submerged rocks make this area dangerous to navigate and it has been the scene of many shipwrecks throughout history. Ryder worked on The Lorelei for many years. He wrote in 1896 that he'd finished the painting, but continued to rework the canvas until his death, more than twenty years later. Ryder struggled with where to place the "witching maiden," and over the years his glazes faded, causing the figure to blend into the rocks behind her. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)


The last peak rosily gleaming
Reveals, enthroned in air,
A maiden, lost in dreaming,
Who combs her golden hair
 Combing her hair with a golden
Comb in her rocky bower,
She sings the tune of the olden
Song that has magical power.
(Heinrich Heine, "The Lore-Ley," in Poems of Heinrich Heine, trans. Louis Untermeyer, 1957)