Review by Choice Review
In the most recent survey of the period (19th Century Art, by R. Rosenblum and H. W. Janson, CH, June'84) Albert Pinkham Ryder merits the equivalent of a full column and a black-and-white reproduction, which, for an American artist, is a huge step forward when compared to previous and other current surveys. Even Americans have tended to approach the contributions of their own in a curiously self-conscious manner, as though these artists were in no way on a par with their French, British, or German counterparts. However, several recent publications have presented more enlightened views and added significantly to our knowledge and appreciation of the American contribution. The present volume, while stressing Ryder's personal isolation and minimal exposure to the arts of Europe, clearly places him in the mainstream of late Romantic-early Symbolist painters. Excellent color and black-and-white reproductions as well as the inclusion of numerous previously unpublished letters will make this a durable standard work on one of the most imaginative of 19th-century artists. -R. Dittmann, St. Olaf College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Dark and brooding, Ryder's (1847-1917) masterful paintings seem to well up out of the superconscious. His heavily textured canvases of storm-tossed ships, moonlit vistas or the haunting allegory Death on a Pale Horse are direct confrontations with nature and with our nature. He is surely one of America's greatest, most enigmatic artists, yet this definitive and beautifully illustrated biographical-critical study is the first full-length scholarly book on Ryder, according to University of Delaware art historian Homer, who collaborated with the late Goodrich, former director of New York's Whitney Museum. The authors shatter the conventional image of the self-taught recluse and give us instead a complex renegade who participated in New York anti-establishment art circles, mingled easily with ordinary workers and bent the influences of Wagner, the Bible, classical myths and dawning European modernism to his idiosyncratic vision. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
