Part of the circle of American artists that included Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, Thomas Doughty first began exhibiting his work in 1815 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Self-taught, he left a job as a leather currier in Philadelphia to pursue a career as a landscape painter. His work caught the attention of Robert Gilmore, Jr., who became his patron. Doughty traveled and painted extensively along the East Coast and contributed substantially to American landscape painting.

Doughty’s mastery of atmospheric effects is evident in this painting, which was previously exhibited at Government House and in a traveling exhibition organized by the Lancaster Art Museum. This painting came to the Peabody Institute as part of the Charles James Madison Eaton Collection in 1893, and was added to the Collection of the Maryland Commission on Artistic Property when the state purchased the Peabody Art Collection in 1996.