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.