John F. Kensett cultivated potential patrons during his frequent visits to Newport, Rhode Island, a summer resort town popular with wealthy urban residents. Equating Kensett's agreeable personality with his pleasing artistic style, the critic Henry Tuckerman described the artist as follows:

"He has the most thoroughly amiable disposition, is wholly superior to envy, and pursues his vocation in such a spirit of love and kindliness, that a critic must be made of very hard material who can find it in his heart to say a severe, inconsiderate, or careless word about John F. Kensett. . . . The calm sweetness of Kensett's best efforts . . . the evenness of manner, the patience in detail, the harmonious tone—are all traceable to the artist's feeling and innate disposition, as well as to his skill."

-Henry Tuckerman, “Landscape Painters,” in Book of the Artists,American Artist Life (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1867)