Museum acquires Albert Pinkham Ryder painting
The Whaling Museum recently announced the acquisition of a painting by famous New Bedford artist, Albert Pinkham Ryder. “With this acquisition,” said Executive Director Anne B. Brengle, “the city will have for the first time a permanent example of the work of one of America’s most influential early Modernist painters.

"I invite the community to view the painting in the Jacobs Family Gallery, which is always open to the public free of charge during Museum hours,” Ms. Brengle said. The painting will be on display for the foreseeable future.

The painting itself depicts a marshland scene of the kind still found along the tidal rivers of the local area. Three solid masses of form and color make up its design: two clumps of foliage, separated by a stream, and a painted sky of golden luminosity. Like most of Ryder’s work, it is small in scale, measuring 9 by 13 inches, but has the intensity of concentration common to his paintings.

Ryder was born in New Bedford on March 19, 1847, the day after the City received its charter of incorporation. His family had moved here from Yarmouthport on Cape Cod, and consisted of his parents and three older brothers, two of whom made whaling voyages to the Arctic and the Okhotsk Sea. His father held a variety of jobs, including for a time the post of boarding officer for the Custom House, taking him to sea to meet incoming ships.

Like the surrounding countryside, as distilled in Ryder’s paintings of rocky pastures, lonely farm houses and old stone walls, the sea would provide the subject for which he is best known: moonlight marines of lone boats on stormy seas under dark and scudding clouds.By 1856, when Ryder was 9, the family took up residence at 16 Mill Street, close to the harbor. By an odd coincidence, on the opposite corner lived the Bierstadt family, whose son Albert had already embarked on a career that would carry him, as it would his younger neighbor, to the heights of recognition in American art.

Whether or not Ryder took instruction or inspiration from Bierstadt is unrecorded, but both spent the mature years of their careers in New York City. Their styles of painting differed dramatically, with Bierstadt achieving fame and fortune for his panoramic views of such natural wonders as the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite. Ryder, on the other hand, painted highly personal views of land and seascapes, as well as episodes from romantic legends, operas, the Bible and Shakespeare’s plays. In terms of output, the contrast is also dramatic, with Bierstadt producing over 500 paintings during the course of his career, while Ryder completed 116 paintings now recognized as authentic, 81 of which are in museum collections.

Although Ryder had both friends and patrons, recognition came slowly. In 1913, he achieved wider notice when a number of his paintings were included in an exhibition known as the Armory Show, which brought the United States its first exposure to the work of such emerging European artists as Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh. From that exhibition came Ryder’s accolade as “America’s Old Master of the Modern Movement.”

Increasingly reclusive, he spent his last years in the home of friends on Long Island, where he died in 1917. His body was returned to New Bedford for burial in the Ryder family plot, not far from the grave of his former neighbor Bierstadt. In 1918 the Metropolitan Museum of Art recognized Ryder’s stature in American art by sponsoring a memorial exhibition of his paintings. But not until 1960 did New Bedford have access to his paintings, the year when the Swain School of Design mounted a loan exhibit consisting of 15 works by Ryder and 35 by Bierstadt.

The Museum’s purchase of Ryder’s Landscape was made possible by the Rose Lamb Gifford Fund, a newly established endowment that provides for acquisitions and conservation of the collections. In 2007, the Museum will presenta selection of Ryder’s work in aspecial exhibition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 23, 2004 (embargoed until 2 p.m. EDT); Contact: Shelley Dawicki, media relations, WHOI, 508 289-2270/3340

Cumulative Sperm Whale Bone Damage
and the Bends

WOODS HOLE , MA
In a study published in the December 24, 2004 issue of the journal Science, Michael Moore and Greg Early at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have documented bone lesions in the rib and chevron bones of sperm whales, most likely caused by tissue damage from nitrogen bubbles that form when the animal rises to the surface.

The WHOI biologists found that the lesions grow in severity with age, and are found in animals from the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. The lesions were found in animals that died up to 111 years ago, and there appears to be no increase in the lesion prevalence since the oceans were industrialized.

Moore and Early studied sixteen partial or complete sperm whale skeletons from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans that had been archived in museums. They found a series of changes in bones attached to the backbone, namely rib bones, and other small bones in the sperm whale‚s tail region. The changes are patches of bone death as a result of obstructed blood supply to the joint surfaces of the bone.

The team found evidence of comparable bone damage to be present with increasing severity as the size of the individual whale increased. Only the calves appeared normal. In looking at the potential causes of the lesions observed, the biologists concluded that such a wide distribution in time and space made nitrogen gas bubbles from a decompression sickness-like syndrome the most likely explanation.

They suspect that sperm whales normally manage their surfacing behavior to minimize problems with such bubbles. They conclude that if such normal behaviors are interrupted by, for instance, noxious acoustic stimuli, (such as sonar or seismic survey guns) there is the risk of acute problems from nitrogen emboli as has been reported in beaked whales exposed to mid frequency sonar. This study was supported in part by the NOAA Fisheries John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Program.

WHOI is a private, independent marine research and engineering, and higher education organization located in Falmouth, MA. Its primary mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the ocean's role in the changing global environment. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, the Institution is organized into five departments, interdisciplinary institutes and a marine policy center, and conducts a joint graduate education program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Related Web Links:

Michael Moore Detailed Information about Sperm Whales Sperm whale biology

Some facts About Sperm Whales:

• Sperm whale dives last about an hour, but can be up to 2 hours and they go to 1-2000m in depth.
• The current global population has been recently estimated to be 360,000 animals, reduced from an estimated pre-whaling stock of about 1.1 million.
• They feed on a variety of deep-water squid and some fish species.