Panel for a Screen: Woman with a Deer

Media - 1929.6.106B - SAAM-1929.6.106B_1 - 50930
Copied Albert Pinkham Ryder, Panel for a Screen: Woman with a Deer, ca. 1876, oil on gilded leather mounted on canvas, 38 1220 14 in. (97.751.4 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly, 1929.6.106B
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Artwork Details

Title
Panel for a Screen: Woman with a Deer
Date
ca. 1876
Dimensions
38 1220 14 in. (97.751.4 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of John Gellatly
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on gilded leather mounted on canvas
Classifications
Keywords
  • Landscape
  • Allegory
  • Figure female — nude
  • Animal — deer
Object Number
1929.6.106B

Artwork Description

During the 1870s and 1880s, Albert Pinkham Ryder became friends with the art dealer Daniel Cottier, who commissioned him to paint several leather panels as decorations for furniture. These three panels for a folding screen tell the story of Genevieve of Brabant, who was wrongfully expelled from her home and abandoned in a forest where her young child was nursed by a doe. Ryder frequently returned to the theme of naive innocence, to express his romantic view of women. A layer of gold underneath these images shines through the translucent colors to create a rich, luminous finish that evokes the artist’s idealism. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)