Albert Pinkham Ryder, (artist), American, 1847 - 1917, Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens, 1888/1891, oil on canvas, overall: 50.5 x 52 cm (19 7/8 x 20 1/2 in.), framed: 75.3 x 77.2 x 6.4 cm (29 5/8 x 30 3/8 x 2 1/2 in.), By his own account, Ryder was so enthralled by a five-hour performance of Wagner's G?tterd?mmerung that he rushed home and began painting this rendition of the opera's narrative, working without sleep or food for forty-eight hours. Galloping down a moonlit path, the legendary Norse hero Siegfried encounters a group of Rhine Maidens who beckon seductively from the phosphorescent river. They warn the hero that the magical ring he won by slaying a dragon was forged from stolen gold and bears a deadly curse. Siegfried defiantly proclaims he would rather die than give up his prize. By the opera's dramatic climax, the nymphs' apocalyptic prophecy is fulfilled: Siegfried is killed; overcome by grief, the heroine Br?nnhilde sacrifices herself on her lover's funeral pyre, the other gods and heroes of Valhalla are consumed by the spreading conflagration, and the Ring of the Nibelung, now purified by the flames, is returned to the river from whence it came..