The eccentric artist Albert Pinkham Ryder bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He moved from Massachusetts to New York City in 1870, where he mainly painted seascapes and other images with mystical associations. His paintings do not present nature or real-life experiences. Instead, his work shows his inner visions and psychological turmoil. Ryder was admired by the first generation of American modernists, who welcomed him into the famed 1913 Armory Show as a fellow modern artist.

This bright, rural scene displays incorporates a luminous haze that characterizes Ryder's work, and that may reflect the influence of the American Transcendentalist movement, which emphasized poetic feelings over ordinary experiences. Through painstaking technique Ryder created enamel-like surfaces and intense colors in his works, whose rich textures and abstract qualities made him a hero to early American modernists.