The Local Boys

A little over a century ago, in the bustling seaport of New Bedford, Mass., a man and a boy found a common interest. The boy, Albert Pinkham Ryder, the son of the town's jack-of-all-trades, was only eleven at the time. But town legend has it that every so often he would cross Mill Street to watch his neighbor Albert Bierstadt, 28, paint. In time, both left their home town to seek their fortunes as artists, but if their paths ever crossed after that, there is no record of it. Last week, as New Bedford's Swain School of Design opened the town's first Ryder-Bierstadt show, they were back together again--two local boys who made good, in strangely different ways.

Bierstadt's father had been a German professional soldier before coming to the U.S., and courtly young Albert himself had studied in Germany. In 1858 he decided to head for St. Louis to join General Frederick Landers' mapping expedition to the Pacific. The paintings he did along the way made him famous. His big (6 ft. by 10 ft.) Landers' Peak, Rocky Mountains was sold for $25.000; his Storm in the Rocky Mountains (12 ft. by 7 ft.) brought $35,000. British critics raved about him ("as devoted a lover of the grandest scenes in nature as any painter who ever lived''). The French gave him the Legion of Honor, and the Austrians bestowed on him their Order of St. Stanislas. At 37, tall, proud Albert Bierstadt was at his peak.

The Great Clutter. Collectors did not find the other Albert so much to their taste. A moody man who came to hate having to meet anyone new, he did not copy nature, but shaped it with his own violent rhythms and dark dreams. In 1908 the great British critic Roger Fry at last wrote a piece about him, but the world at large still failed to take notice. By that time, Ryder was already an unkempt eccentric with wild hair and ragged clothes who lived on Manhattan's Lower West Side in a clutter of newspapers, bottles, unwashed dishes, dirty clothes and unfinished paintings that grew more frightening every year. He refused to let handymen in for necessary repairs, was so averse to housekeeping that he preferred to sleep on the floor rather than face putting a clean sheet on his bed.

Only after his death was Ryder recognized as one of America's masters. Bierstadt's oversize canvases disappeared from museum walls, and one after another, they found their way to storerooms and attics. Critics dismissed them as huge postcards, and some declared that it was more Bierstadt's commanding manner than his talent that had brought him such high prices. But last week viewers at the New Bedford show could see why the story did not end there.

A Certain Grandeur. In such Ryder canvases as his famous Toilers of the Sea, the genius of the dreamer comes through with its familiar brooding power. But when Bierstadt was confronted by a scene like Lake Tahoe, he displayed a certain grandeur worthy of the sweep of the pioneer country he painted. A month ago, a dealer offered $15,000 for a Bierstadt that went for only $2,200 in 1946. If Ryder remains the master, Bierstadt. too, is still a part of the permanent American gallery.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.