Ryder grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, but while in his twenties moved to Chicago, where he found work as an illustrator and attended classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. By the turn of the century, the artist had traveled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian and later exhibited works at the Paris Salon. Upon returning to the States in 1907, he established himself in New York City and soon purchased a house in Wilton, New Hampshire where he summered each year. The animated brushwork and thick impasto layers of Early April align this work with the technical currents of American Impressionism, the muted palette, lush atmospheric effects, simplified forms, and pale luminosity, argue in favor of a Tonalist approach.
