The Blue Rider (German: Der Blaue Reiter) is an oil painting executed in Bavaria in 1903 by the Russian emigré artist Wassily Kandinsky.

It is now held in a private collection in Zürich, and shares its name with an almanac and the art movement he would co-found with Franz Marc in the early 1910s.

[1] Shortly after marrying his cousin, after seeing a painting in Monet's series Haystacks, he was faced with a dilemma to be either a professor, or to begin a career as an artist.

[1] It depicts a horseman in a blue cloak galloping through a meadow on a white horse with a forest in the background.

The painting represented an important milestone on Kandinsky's artistic transition from impressionism to modern abstract art, of which he was one of the pioneers.