Albert Pinkham Ryder and the Ripening Painting

“An inspiration is no more than a seed that must be planted and nourished. It gives growth as it grows to the artist, only as he watches and waits with his highest effort.” At the age of 53, Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) complained that he is too young to do his best work yet. Far from being a sign of mere humility, this statement corresponds to Ryder’s idea of creation as an organic process of “ripening”. After the seed has been planted, it may take years before reaching “the season of fruitage”. Indeed, Ryder was known for his extreme slowness to complete a painting. During the last fifteen years of his life, he was still “finishing” canvases he started a decade ago. His sluggish late work has often been considered as a symptom of a fall off in his creative ability, an idea based on the fact that he was not producing any “new” pictures and preferred to work on canvases started ten years ago, which challenged the concept of originality and creativity. Instead of assessing Ryder’s late work in terms of pathology, it may be examined through his own theory of maturing as a phenomenon of the painting itself, considered as a living organism. Speaking of his works as his “children”, the celibate artist was more and more reluctant to depart from his offsprings as the time of harvest approached.