George Harvey, born in London, went to America in 1820. During his first two years he found himself "in the remote wilds of the New World, hunting and trapping, scribbling poetry and prose, drawing and sketching" in Ohio, Michigan and parts of Canada"(D. Shelley George Harvey, English Painter of Atmospheric Landscapes in America , American Collector, April 1948, pp. 10-13). In 1828, he was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design and was living in Boston. The inscription on the reverse of this work suggests that the dress was loaned by the Academy for the portrait