# The Essex Canal

- By: Albert Pinkham Ryder (American, 1847–1917)
- Date: c. 1896
- Medium: Oil on canvas mounted on board
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: 41.3 × 52.1 cm (16 1/4 × 20 1/2 in.)
- Culture: United States
- Credit line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Geist
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/60239)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/1f1931d1-06f4-c005-a75d-1a0b12470d92/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Albert Pinkham Ryder was one of the most innovative artists of the late 19th century, creating reductive, yet expressive compositions out of thick, slowly worked paint, combined with glazes, varnishes, and unconventional materials. In The Essex Canal, a waterway faintly meanders from the green-hued foreground to a skim of blue along the horizon, with an expansive sky beyond. A younger generation of American artists celebrated Ryder as an important early modernist, who pushed toward abstraction and focused on the arduous process of painting itself as instrumental to one’s creative vision. Ryder’s reclusiveness only added to his intrigue and mythic status as an artist ahead of his time.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0