The Delaware Water Gap has attracted artists since the early nineteenth century. The gap, recognized by the sloping v-shaped land formation where the Delaware River cuts through Mount Minsi and Mount Tammany, is located about three miles north of Portland, Pennsylvania, and Columbia, New Jersey. The area is noted for its scenic landscape and rustic towns and was the subject for a number of Eilshemius’s paintings. His early Delaware Water Gap paintings were pure landscapes (such as the painting of c. 1888 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). He then began to include the human figure, which would become the main subject of his paintings. Several paintings of the same size as the museum’s from the period 1908-9 are listed in the files of Valentine Dudensing, Eilshemius’s dealer. The museum’s scene is of The Kittinny, one of the largest hotels of the area, located just south of the gap, and one of several notable hotels and buildings that Eilshemius painted. In this canvas Eilshemius focused on the figures, placing them in the foreground on a porch, the architecture of which determined the structure of the scene. Moreover, the pole obstructs a clear view of the gap’s characteristic slope, thereby minimizing its importance. Eilshemius painted many genre paintings, usually using the countryside as the locale to explore the popular late nineteenth-century theme of the leisure activities of people on vacation. Eilshemius spent his summers migrating from one rural hotel to another, painting the popular resort areas of the Poconos, Catskills, and places in Connecticut and New England. In such images he often portrayed the vacationers fishing, boating, or swimming. In this evening scene, the time indicated by the long shadows and cool sky, the people are amusing themselves playing cards outdoors. Eilshemius presented the scene in large simple shapes, which would suggest a sketch if not for the size of the canvas. The naïve depiction of the figures’ anatomy is typical of his paintings of this period and indicates the early stage of his moving away from his academic training and toward a more child-like painting style. The variant spelling of his name in the signature is also characteristic of his paintings from 1888 to 1913.

The late nineteenth century witnessed a growing cosmopolitanism and sophistication in American culture. Great riches were amassed by railroad tycoons and land barons, and along with this came the desire for a luxurious standard of living. Collectors filled their homes with European as well as American works of art. American artists, generally trained abroad, often painted in styles that were indistinguishable from their European counterparts.
Most Americans who studied abroad did so in the European academies, which promoted uplifting subject matter and a representational style that emphasized well-modeled, clearly defined forms and realistic color. Academic painting served American artists well, for their clients demanded elaborate large-scale paintings to demonstrate their wealth and social positions. With an emphasis on material objects and textures, academic artists immortalized their patrons’ importance in full-length portraits.
Academic painting dominated taste in Europe throughout the century. But in the 1860s impressionism emerged in France as a reaction to this hegemony. By the 1880s this “new painting” was still considered progressive. Mary Cassatt was the only American invited to participate in the revolutionary Paris impressionist exhibitions. Despite her participation and the early interest of several other American painters, few Americans explored impressionism until the 1890s. Impressionist painters no longer had to choose subject matter of an elevated character but instead could depict everyday scenes and incidents. Nor did impressionists have to record the physical world with the objective detail of a photograph. Artists were now encouraged to leave their studios and paint outside under different weather conditions. American impressionists used the new aesthetic to capture the charm and beauty of the countryside and the city as well as the quiet delicacy of domestic interiors.

Exhibition Label, 1997 Louis M. Eilshemius was a unique figure in turn-of-the-century American art. Although trained abroad in established art academies and an accomplished draftsman, he rejected traditional realism for his own personal brand of romantic primitive art. In Delaware Water Gap he chose a popular resort area for the locale of his simple scene. Located near the northern Pennsylvania-New Jersey border where the Delaware River cuts through Mount Minsi and Mount Tammany, the gap had attracted visitors desirous of rustic landscape since the early 19th century. Tourists enjoying a breath of fresh air are shown on the veranda of the largest hotel in the area, The Kittinny. The theme of middle-class leisure activity first became popular with the French Impressionists in the 1860s, at a time when that social class finally achieved enough wealth and free time to enjoy themselves.