When John Vanderlyn travelled to New York State in 1802 to paint a series of views of Niagara Falls, this impressive site had yet to be rendered by a professionally trained artist. Later, Vanderlyn chose two of these views to be engraved in London in 1803-4, one by J. Merigot, A Distant View of the Falls of Niagara, and the second by Frederick Lewis, A View of the Western Branch of the Falls of Niagara. This very rare pair of engravings along with Vanderlyn's paintings of the same subject represent the first pictorial depictions of one of America's natural wonders and some of the earliest in the print medium.
There is only one other known hand-colored impression of this very rare Lewis engraving. It is in the collection of the Bibliothèque National in Paris. Only eight impressions without hand-coloring are known.