American Art Collaborative

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