Albert Pinkham Ryder, along with Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, is recognized as one of the great “ancestors” of American painting, although he was largely unknown in his own time. Twentieth-century taste discovered him and his mystical pictures have had a profound effect on modern abstract art. Lloyd Goodrich is Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art under whose auspices his definitive biography of Thomas Eakins was published in 1933. For many years Mr. Goodrich has been carrying on research in the life and work of Albert P. Ryder, in preparation for a definitive biography. Since Ryder’s work has been widely forged, with the forgeries outnumbering the genuine pictures about eight to one, this study has involved examination of hundreds of paintings, using x-rays and other scientific methods. The present volume, originally published in 1959, has the advantage of these years of thorough study.

Traces the life and career of the enigmatic American artist, discusses his unusual painting technique, and looks at his literary and artistic influences.

This volume (the first to appear on the artist in 30 years) presents new information about Ryder's technique and materials, based on current scholarship and advanced methods of conservation. The paintings are discussed individually with comparative illustrations, including X-rays, autoradiographs, and related examples by other artists. Paper edition ($29.95) not seen by RandR. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Publisher Description

"This book takes you through the collection gallery by gallery, illuminating the art and installations in each room"--From preface.

This volume features artists who brought a new sophistication and elegancento American art in the three decades before World War I. Wealthyndustrialists eager to acquire culture began to patronize native artists whoad achieved international recognition. John Singer Sargent, Irving Wiles andecilia Beaux created portraits of these new patrons, while John La Farge andugustus Saint-Gaudens made luxurious adornments for their homes. One groupf painters - including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Frederick Arthur Bridgman,enry Ossawa Tanner and Charles Sprague Pearce - responded especially to theascnation with exotic Middle Eastern, Egyptian or "Oriental" cultures thatharacterized this age of international imperialism. The educated and refinedspects of Gilded Age culture are expressed here in Renaissance-inspiredaintings by Abbott Thayer and Mary Cassatt. Romantic literary works byisionary Albert Pinkham Ryder symbolize the idealized strivings of thiseneration, while the rugged masculine landscapes of Winslow Homer emblemizehe struggle and conflict that marked this period of contending social and

When, in 1989, a collection of John Updike’s writings on art appeared under the title Just Looking, a reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle commented, “He refreshes for us the sense of prose opportunity that makes art a sustaining subject to people who write about it.” In the sixteen years since Just Looking was published, he has continued to serve as an art critic, mostly for The New York Review of Books, and from fifty or so articles has selected, for this richly illustrated book, eighteen that deal with American art. After beginning with early American portraits, landscapes, and the transatlantic career of John Singleton Copley, Still Looking then considers the curious case of Martin Johnson Heade and extols two late-nineteenth-century masters, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Next, it discusses the eccentric pre-moderns James McNeill Whistler and Albert Pinkham Ryder, the competing American Impressionists and Realists in the early twentieth century, and such now-historic avant-garde figures as Alfred Stieglitz, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and Elie Nadelman. Two appreciations of Edward Hopper and appraisals of Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol round out the volume. America speaks through its artists. As Updike states in his introduction, “The dots can be connected from Copley to Pollock: the same tense engagement with materials, the same demand for a morality of representation, can be discerned in both.” On Just Looking “Some of these essays are marvelous examples of critical explanation, in which the psychological concerns of the novelist drive the eye from work to work in an exhibition until a deep understanding of the art emerges.” —Arthur Danto, The New York Times Book Review “These are remarkably elegant little essays, dense in thought and perception but offhandedly casual in style. Their brevity makes more acute the sense of regret one feels to see them end.” —Jeremy Strick, Newsday

Many of us want to learn “how to draw.” But as artist Anthony Ryder explains, it’s much more important to learn what to draw. In other words, to observe and draw what we actually see, rather than what we think we see. When it comes to drawing the human figure, this means letting go of learned ideas and expectation of what the figure should look like. It means carefully observing the interplay of form and light, shape and line, that combine to create the actual appearance of human form. In The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing, amateur and experienced artists alike are guided toward this new way of seeing and drawing the figure with a three-step drawing method. The book’s progressive course starts with the block-in, an exercise in seeing and establishing the figure’s shape. It then build to the contour, a refined line drawing that represents the figure’s silhouette. The last step is tonal work on the inside of the contour, when light and shadow are shaped to create the illusion of form. Separate chapters explore topics critical to the method: gesture, which expresses a sense of living energy to the figure; light, which largely determines how we see the model; and form, which conveys the figure’s volume and mass. Examples, step-by-steps, and special “tips” offer helpful hints and practical guidance throughout. Lavishly illustrated with the author’s stunning artwork, The Artist’s Complete Guide to Figure Drawing combines solid instruction with thoughtful meditations on the art of drawing, to both instruct and inspire artists of all levels.

Published to accompany the exhibition Jackson Pollock held the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1 November 1998 to 2 February 1999.