Image
Aqueduct of the Pennsylvania Canal Below Harrisburg, PA, 1868, by Russell Smith.
Credit: Courtesy of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Gift of the William A. Coulter Fund
As canals lost their economic importance they became symbols of a simpler, quieter, and slower way of life marginalized by the railroads. Reduced to pleasure boating and swimming, canals also became popular subjects for landscape painters.