While Anschutz was born in Kentucky and studied art in New York City, he is generally considered a Pennsylvania artist. He moved there to study painting under Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Like Eakins, his mentor, Anschutz went on to teach at the Academy and counted among his students, artists such as John Sloan, Charles Sheeler, Edward Redfield, and Lancaster’s own Charles Demuth. Anschutz succeeded William Merritt Chase as director of the prestigious Academy.
The ground breaking choice of subjects—human activity regardless of how mundane it might be—was one of Anschutz’s legacies. His most famous painting, The Ironworkers, Noontime in the de Young Museum in San Francisco, is an example of his preferred subject matter.
While this atmospheric, sketchy painting does not include human figures, it shows that Anschutz was keenly interested in the world around him. Port Richmond is, of course, a section of Philadelphia, not the city in Virginia, and the tanker is one he surely observed firsthand.