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Florizel and Perdita
Albert Pinkham Ryder (born New Bedford, MA 1847-died New York City 1917)
by 1887
- Medium
- oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 12 1/4 x 7 1/4 in. (31.1 x 18.4 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Albert Pinkham Ryder painted several images based on plays by William Shakespeare. His favorite play was The Winter’s Tale, and this small image shows the characters Prince Florizel and the shepherd girl Perdita, who he was forbidden to marry. They discovered that Perdita was actually the banished daughter of a king, however, and the lovers were reunited. Ryder never married and constantly mourned the absence of love in his life. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989) He may have been comparing himself to Prince Florizel and hoping that he, too, would fall in love with a “princess.”
