Visionary Romantic painters of the 18th and 19th centuries were
a breed unto themselves, using nature, literature and the
imagination as inspiration for dreamlike imagery. Albert Pinkham
Ryder (1847-1917), a New York painter emerging in the late 19th
century, was a visionary Romantic who was also modern. His
hauntingly crude mythological scenes, landscapes and moonlit
marine paintings, at first puzzling to the art establishment,
were soon recognized for their simplicity and expressive power.
Ryder's works sold for increasingly high prices and became so
well regarded that in 1913 they were exhibited in New York
alongside Gauguins, Cézannes and Van Goghs in the master section
of the Armory Show, America's first major exhibition of modern
art. Admiration for Ryder among collectors, curators, scholars
and particularly artists—including Marsden Hartley and Jackson
Pollock —has blossomed for more than a century.  Ryder's most
deeply affecting work is "Jonah" (c. 1885-95), his masterly
portrayal of the biblical tale