Almeida Júnior, born in Itu, in the interior of Sao Paulo, was studying from 1869, at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro. This was followed, in 1876, by a grant from the Emperor Don Pedro II for him to study under Alexander Cabanel at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. There, Almeida Júnior would have seen Rosa Bonheur's Le Marche aux Chevaux. Although highly acclaimed at the Salon of 1853, it failed to sell immediately, due to its large size. The Parisian dealer, Gambard, toured the painting through France, America and England, where Thomas Landseer, brother of Edwin, made an engraving of it. It was purchased by Cornelius Vanderbilt for $53,000 at the landmark sale of the Alexander Stewart Collection on March 25, 1887, and donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1882 Almeida Júnior returned to Brazil, where he established a studio in Rio de Janeiro. It was here that he received a gold medal, in 1889, from the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. That same year he returned to Itu, painting landscapes until his untimely death in 1899.