William Hart was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1823, but moved to Albany, New York with his family when he was six years old. His work is associated with the second generation of the Hudson River School, which included Frederic Edwin Church, John Frederick Kensett, and Sanford Robinson Gifford. Illustrious landscape painters George Inness and Asher Durand were Hart’s major influences. Hart was a source of inspiration for landscape painters Homer Martin and Lemuel Miles. He was successful during his lifetime and earned membership into the prestigious National Academy.
The Scottish-American painter began an apprenticeship in Troy, New York, painting decorative panels for a coachmaker. He turned to painting portraits in his teenage years, traveling to Michigan in search of commissions, but he was largely unsuccessful. Hart’s fortunes turned when he began painting landscapes and he exhibited his first painting at the National Academy in 1840. In 1849, he sailed to Scotland to study art, before returning three years later to upstate New York. He established studios in Albany, Brooklyn, and the Tenth Street Studio Building in Manhattan, where he painted serene and romantic landscapes, which often times included winding rivers. He enjoyed success with these landscapes and in 1865, he became the first president of the Brooklyn Academy of Design and also founded the American Watercolor Society, where Hart would later become president in 1870.