Charles Volkmar is best known today as a ceramic artist, but in the mid-1860s, at the outset of his career, he was very much the model of an aspiring landscape painter. The prevailing taste at that time still favored the Hudson River School. Eager to establish himself as a professional artist, Volkmar assimilated characteristics of the style, including a preference for landscape as subject matter and the use of a horizontal format, dark palette and tight brushwork. Born in Baltimore, Volkmar received his initial art education at the Maryland Institute. In 1861 he went to Paris, where he remained for nearly fifteen years. Many of his American subjects were painted in Europe, along with Barbizon and other French scenes.

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