Greenwood Lake, New Jersey, was a popular tourist site, described in one nineteenth-century travel guide as: "A very agreeable jaunt from the metropolis [of New York], whether for the pure air of the hills, the pleasant aspect of nature, or for the sports of the angle and the gun. . . . It is a beautiful water of seven miles in extent, and all about it, in every direction, are lesser, but scarcely less charming, lakes and lakelets." [Appleton's Illustrated Handbook of American Travel (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1857), 179]

Jasper F. Cropsey first visited Greenwood Lake in 1843 and returned there often to sketch outdoors: "I lived at Greenwood Lake during the summer for a number of years and found a strong attachment to the place. It has been the origin of many of my pictures." [Jasper Francis Cropsey to John W. Kitchell, August 21, 1897, John W. Kitchell Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC]