A Wild Note of Longing
Albert Pinkham Ryder Comes Home to New Bedford
smithsonian american art museum, gift of john gellatly, 1929.6.95
The New Bedford Whaling Museum has brought together major masterworks spanning the career of Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917) in the landmark exhibition A Wild Note of Longing: Albert Pinkham Ryder and a Century of American Art. This is the first exhibition of Ryder’s work since Elizabeth Broun’s 1990 retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A native of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Ryder achieved legendary status with the art world during his lifetime and his work continues to influence contemporary American artists. The exhibition opened in June and runs through 31 October 2021. Born in 1847, Albert Pinkham Ryder no doubt drew inspiration from his hometown roots, with a deep connection to the sea and natural environment. Over many years, Ryder has been called poetic, spiritual, mysterious, and reclusive. Of all the descriptions, the one we don’t hear often is that he was the “Son of the City of New Bedford,” a place made prosperous by the economics of the whaling industry and once known as “the city that lit the world.” One of the most intriguing things about Ryder is his authenticity, a key factor contributing to the cult status he achieved during his lifetime. While we can find numerous connections with his peers, probable inspiration from the sites of his youth and travels, and some influence by those who preceded him and contemporaries, Ryder was nonetheless a prophetic visionary, seeing and representing the world in a way that diverged from everyone else. “To suggest that Ryder may well be the most influential American artist in America may still seem a rash statement, but it’s not a new idea,” writes exhibition cocurator William C. Agee. Most famously, of course, Jackson Pollock proclaimed in 1944 that “the only American master who interests me is Ryder.” But since then, there are many who might well say the same thing. Today, Ryder’s presence is alive and thriving in the Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1905 art world, as much now as it was then. A Wild Note of Longing features Ryder’s most iconic paintings, including exceptional examples from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Wadsworth Athenaeum, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the Toledo Museum of Art, and private collections. In addition to Ryder’s works, the exhibition features paintings by well-known modernists such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Jackson Pollock, and Wolf Kahn, who were inspired by Ryder’s experimental approach and abandonment of tradition. Just as A Wild Note of Longing celebrates his influence on well-known modernists, it also reveals Ryder’s continuing influence on present-day artists. Painters Bill Jensen, Pousette-Dart (both Nathaniel and Richard), Robert Rauschenberg, Albert York, Lois Dodd, Jill Moser, Peter Shear, Katherine Bradford, Alan Praziak, Farrell Brickhouse, Sue Miller, Emily Auchincloss, and many more acknowledge Ryder as a key inspiration or mentor in spirit even now, a century after his death. Commentary from these artists is included in the exhibition and accompanying catalogue, testifying to Ryder’s continued currency as a force in the American art world. The 250-page illustrated exhibition catalogue is the first book on Ryder in three decades and is supported by a grant awarded by Furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund. This longoverdue new look at the life and work of beloved
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photo by alice boughton, archives of american art, smithsonian institution
by Amanda McMullen
Flying Dutchman, completed by 1887, oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard. SEA HISTORY 176, AUTUMN 2021