At right is one of Ryder's earliest attempts to build that kind of rhythm. It's much more delicate and gentle, but still we feel how the motion rocks the boat and sails, pivoting and rotating them within the frame, with the moon as an anchor for the composition. This painting, by the way, is called With Sloping Mast and Dipping Prow. The subject is taken from Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. You'll not be surprised to learn that it, too, is about salvation through forgiveness.

In Jonah, (details pictured above) Ryder marshals all his rhythmic forces. The churning seas have the familiar clockwise motion, but they are interrupted by a violent diagonal zigzag effect, as if the picture might rupture down the middle. Compounding the sense of turmoil is the very high horizon line, so the ocean swells almost fill the frame. There's no release in the sky either, where God's all-embracing wings double as clouds pressing down on the horizon. All nature seems to share Jonah's sense of panic.

Pictured (top): Albert Pinkham Ryder, With Sloping Mast and Dipping Prow, about 1880–85; oil, 12 x 12 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.

Pictured (bottom): Albert Pinkham Ryder, Jonah, about 1885–95; oil, 27 1/4 x 34 3/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Musuem, Gift of John Gellatly.

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