William Trost Richards was a landscape and marine painter known for his meticulously rendered views of the natural world in both oil and watercolor. He received his artistic education in his native city of Philadelphia, where he worked as an illustrator and designer of ornamental metalwork while studying drawing and painting with German-born artist Paul Weber. In the mid-1850s, Richards traveled through Europe with fellow American artists William Stanley Haseltine and Alexander Lawrie, spending several months in Düsseldorf. By the late 1860s, Richards had increasingly turned his attention to marine subjects and coastal views, eventually settling in Newport, Rhode Island.
