The Waste of Waters is their Field, early 1880s (oil on panel)

Albert Pinkham Ryder based this seascape on a poem by the Englishman Robert Southey that recounted the ocean voyage of a medieval king to the New World: “Day after day, day after day the same,— / A weary waste of waters!” Ryder was regarded as a visionary and experimental painter among artists. He often addressed the theme of human destiny, as played out in literature or the Bible. Influenced by modern European art, he rendered his subjects with highly simplified or expressively exaggerated forms and densely textured surfaces that challenged the visual expectations of his American audience.