Groll, who was born in New York City, first traveled to Arizona, the subject of this landscape painting, in 1904 with ethnologist Stewart Culin. Soon, his western paintings became popular and earned him a medal at the 1906 annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Groll’s paintings of the western landscape impressed the Pueblo Indians so much that they dubbed him “Chief Bald-Head-Eagle-Eye” for his ability to capture the vastness of land and towering clouds.
