New York born Webster studied at Yale University and traveled to Paris in 1904, where he studied at the Académie Julian and where he was first exposed to the graphic works of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Charles Meryon and other artists who took part in the etching revival. As an expatriate, Webster traveled extensively and this view of Rome shows the area of the Campidoglio, almost as the neighborhood may have looked in the late Renaissance. The streets and open spaces teem with pedestrians making their way through the complex urban fabric of the Eternal City.