pression, in stranger form but with greater intensity, in the work of
our first pure imaginative creator.

ALBERT PINKHAM RYDER was descended from old Cape Cod families
on both his father's and mother's sides. The Ryders or Riders had
been settled since the middle seventeenth century at Yarmouth on
the north shore of the Cape. His grandfather Benjamin Ryder was
a carpenter who built several houses in the town; he and his wife
were religious, belonging to a strict Methodist sect whose women
dressed Quaker-fashion. The artist's father, Alexander Gage Ryder,
was born at Yarmouth in 1815, and married Elizabeth Cobb of New
Bedford, granddaughter of Judge Daniel Davis of Barnstable on the
Cape, an eminent Massachusetts jurist. An early account says that
she was "distinguished for benevolence, self-sacrifice and sympathy
--a beautiful woman with a beautiful character. It has been said of
Albert Ryder's genius that he owed it to his mother, a passionate
lover of flowers and beautiful things." About 1840 the family moved
to New Bedford, where Alexander Ryder became a dealer in fuel
and also boarding officer at the port.

The future artist, youngest of four brothers, was born in New
Bedford, March 19, 1847, in an old house opposite the home of
Albert Bierstadt's family. At this time New Bedford was at the
height of its activity as the greatest whaling port in the world.
Many of the Ryder family had followed the sea; so did two of
Albert's brothers, and a favorite childhood memory was of one of
them coming home from a long voyage and in his happiness kissing
the pig. From earliest consciousness the sea must have played a
large part in Ryder's life. His bent toward art showed early. "When
he was only four years old," his sister-in-law said, "he would be
found lying on his stomach on the floor, lost to the world in his pic-
ture book. He did not care so much about drawing, as long as he
had his colors."

He graduated from a local grammar school but did not go be-

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