New Bedford, Massachusetts Artist

New Bedford has been the home of several world-renowned painters, such as Albert Bierstadt and Albert Pinkham Ryder.

Ryder was born in 1847, at the height of New Bedford's status as the "World's Richest City." He lived there until he was 20-years-old, at which time he moved to Greenwich Village where he studied at the National Academy of Design.

He was one of four brothers, Edward was in the Union Navy and Preserved was a whale chaser.  Too frail for a whaler's career, Pinkie, as he was called, was also too young for the war.  So, he turned to art as a career.

For part of his artistic life, he was considered a Tonalist, working at the19th century art form that depended on a colorful atmosphere that was muted as though by a foggy sea mist.

For the other part of his life he was considered  a Symbolist, working on symbolic images.

The first work of Pinkie's that I saw did not impress me.

Moonlit Cove,

My impression changed when I saw the next work.

Pastoral

I really like this painting.

Resurrection.

And finally, I believe that this painting is the kind of work that Ryder wanted to be remembered for.

Boat.

Christopher Benfey wrote a nice critique of an exhibition of Ryder's paintings held from June to October 2021 at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. I wish I had been able to see the exhibition, listed as "A Wild Note of Longing Albert Pinkham Ryder and a Century of American Art,"

Benfey also remarked on something Ralph Waldo Emerson said during a New Bedford visit in 1833:

NB has a predatory industry, "chasing the poor whale wherever he swims all round the globe, that they may tear off his warm jacket of blubber and melt it down into oil for your lamp, and to steal from him his bone to make stays and parasols for ladies,"

PS:  We now love and protect whales.

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