Gustav Grunewald was a member of the Moravian religious community of Gnadau, Germany. In 1831, he left Germany to join the sect's settlement at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He first traveled to Niagara Falls on a sketching trip in 1832, and he went on to paint and exhibit the subject at least eleven times. For the Moravians, nature presented evidence of God. For this reason, Niagara Falls would have held spiritual significance for Grunewald and his community.

In his pendant paintings of Niagara Falls, Grunewald unites American painting, history, landscape, and identity. The two canvases offer an early example of the use of landscape to establish national identity through the sublime, a pictorial vocabulary that emphasizes the viewer's felt experience over strict visual accuracy. Although at first glance the paintings appear to be a single view divided across two canvases, the perspective actually subtly shifts from one canvas to the other.