# Florizel and Perdita

- By: Albert Pinkham Ryder (born New Bedford, MA 1847-died New York City 1917)
- Date: 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)
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=21445)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/88662199cd40772e6df491914d661a88.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.”