A member of the second generation of Hudson River School painters, Samuel Colman was raised in New York City, the son of an art book publisher. In New York he studied briefly with Asher B. Durand and at the age of nineteen was featured in an exhibition at the National Academy of Design. By the age of twenty-two he was made an associate member of the Academy and full member in 1862. Colman embarked on the first of several trips to Europe in 1860 and began traveling to the American West in the early 1870s. Colman visited and worked at Yosemite, the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and in Utah, Wyoming, and along the Oregon Trail. He is known for the skillful manipulation of the effects of light on a scene and for his sensitive approach to the atmosphere surrounding his subject, which lends an air of quiet beauty or majesty to his work.