Among the “less paintable” subjects that Charles Goeller exhibited in 1947, ranging from dreary streets, oil refineries to rotting piers, one critic observed that he has “managed to give them a truly poetic character.” Arthur Kill at Elizabethport illustrates the artist’s concern for the ten-mile long Elizabeth River due to agricultural and industrial development at that time. The river drains into the Arthur Kill, and Goeller made a plea for restoring local waterways in the article he published in 1950 called “City River.” The painting dramatizes the polluted conditions he witnessed: “Today there is green slime on rotten pilings of long abandoned wharves, week-old oil slicks floating to and fro with the rise and fall of the tide, a sulphide reek of industrial waste.” The painting underscores Goeller’s deep concern for the environment in the stark contrast between the finely painted phosphorescent mildew in the foreground against the misty industrial scene that looms on the horizon.