  About the Artwork
  
  
  Ryder was a reclusive, self-taught artist, whose painting style is both highly personal and very expressionistic. Here Ryder combines two of his favorite themes—his love for the sea and his fascination with Shakespeare. The painting is not a literal scene from “The Tempest,” but a combination of all the major elements from Act 1, Scene 2, placed into one dramatic storm-filled landscape. Ryder reworked the painting for more than twenty years and at one point the artist took a hot poker to the canvas and dragged it through the thickest part of the sky. The painting remained in the artist’s possession until his death.
  
  
  Title
  The Tempest
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1892, reworked between 1896 and 1918
  
  Artist
  Albert Pinkham Ryder
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1847-1917
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 27 3/4 × 35 inches (70.5 × 88.9 cm)
  Framed: 43 5/8 × 51 × 6 1/8 inches (110.8 × 129.5 × 15.6 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  50.19
  
  
  Copyright
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