Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, completed by 1887

Flying Dutchman. Ryder inherited some kind of psychedelic mind from his fellow New Bedford born Herman Melville? He carried on after Eugene Delacroix died? The glowing ship forever doomed to sail turbulent seas. The dead communicating urgently with the living. The Flying Dutchman theme appears in many art forms, famously in Wagner’s opera of the same name.

Ryder’s paintings are always small, thick and cracking from careless technique and nuts. Gloriously so.