Port Ben, Delaware and Hudson Canal

In 1893, newly returned from France, where he spent the last five summers painting at Giverny, Theodore Robinson sought additional income by teaching landscape painting at the Brooklyn School of Art in Naponach, New York. Located along the canal that connected the Delaware and Hudson rivers, the area surrounding this rural village presented him with an expansive pastoral landscape that differed markedly from the French terrain he had previously painted. In his diaries, Robinson noted especially the effects of clouds and the broad horizon, features that play an important role in the composition of this picture. The canal and towpaths provided him with ample perspectival devices, which he fully exploited to suggest deep recession into the distance. The following summer, Robinson painted along the Connecticut shore at Cos Cob. In the fall and winter, he replaced Robert W. Vonnoh as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy. He was hired by Harrison S. Morris, the secretary and managing director of the Academy. Morris, a strong proponent of American Impressionism, was the person most responsible for forming the Impressionist collection at the Academy, and he was behind the purchase of this work. It had previously been offered as a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and had been rejected. Morris noted wryly in his memoirs that the Metropolitan Museum "had not grown up yet to the lure of Impressionist painting; they held it, like even lesser critics under suspicion."