American Art Collaborative

Albert Pinkham Ryder never relied on sketches before he started work on a painting and instead applied large areas of color with quick, expressive strokes of the palette knife. In this unfinished painting, we can see where he changed the composition simply by painting his latest idea over previous attempts. He altered the direction of the hay cart and decided it should be pulled by oxen instead of horses. We can still see the faint outline of a horse behind the wheels, while the oxen are just blocked in with a reddish-brown wash. This painting is a rare glimpse of the early stages of Ryder's work, before he began the painstaking process of adding layer upon layer of translucent glaze. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)