This very early, intimate landscape study by Richards was painted when the artist was only eighteen years old. Clearly, it demonstrates that the young artist held great potential, exhibiting understanding of the subtleties of light, color, and atmosphere in nature. Richards, who was born in Philadelphia, began his career as a landscapist, developing a style that incorporated the delicacy and precision of the British Pre-Raphaelites, whose works he encountered in Philadelphia by the mid-1850s. He trained alongside William Stanley Haseltine under Paul Weber, the landscape painter from Darmstadt, Germany, who had immigrated to Philadelphia.
