Albert Pinkham Ryder's Two Wagnerian Paintings: The Flying Dutchman and Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens
Albert Pinkham Ryder's Two Wagnerian Paintings: The Flying Dutchman and Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens
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Date
1988
Authors
Carman, Sharon Dale
Advisor
Peters-Campbell, John
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Abstract
Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) has traditionally
been regarded as an anomalous figure in the history of
art. A small, but growing, body of scholarship has
recently been devoted to correcting this view of the
artist and to establishing his relationship to the aesthetic
currents of his time. This study explores the
influence on his art of Ryder's environment, late
nineteenth-century New York. Two of Ryder's paintings,
each based on an incident in an opera by Richard Wagner,
are examined: Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens, drawn from
Gotterdammerung; and The Flying Dutchman, inspired by Der
fliegende Hollander. The history of opera in nineteenthcentury
New York helps to explain how an American painter
came to be influenced by such distinctly German operatic
themes. German immigration patterns are linked with
changes in operatic taste, and the interest of native
intellectuals in Wagner's music and ideas is discussed.
Wagnerian staging tradition is posited as a source for the
compositions of both Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens and
The Flying Dutchman. It is demonstrated that the set
designed by Josef Hoffmann for the original Bayreuth production
of Gotterdammerung, Act III, Scene I, served as
the specific compositional basis for Ryder's Siegfried and
the Rhine Maidens.