Gilbert Stefan Anton Ernst von Canal was an Austrian landscape and marine painter and watercolorist of the Düsseldorf School.
Von Canal briefly studied music at the University of Vienna and with Anton Bruckner at the Vienna Conservatory. He received artistic training as a painter from 1874 at the Vienna Art Academy, where he was taught by Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels and Carl Wurzinger. At the suggestion of Josef Willroider, he went to Düsseldorf in 1878, where he lived until 1894/1895, married Ida Louise Elisabeth Baum in 1881 and belonged to the Malkasten artists' association from 1882 to 1894. Starting in 1880, he traveled several times from Düsseldorf to Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as England and Lower Germany. From 1894/1895 he lived in Munich.
Von Canal, who carried the title of royal professor in Munich, was a painter who was influenced by Andreas Achenbach's romantic conception of landscape as well as by Dutch painting of the Golden Age and - based on this art - atmospheric, scenic views of historic cities, villages, Castles, palaces and mills as well as river and coastal landscapes. He was often represented at art exhibitions in Berlin (from 1880), Munich (from 1883) and Düsseldorf.