Moran is remembered for breath­taking paintings of the American West. One of his earliest masterpieces, The Grand Canyon of the Yellow­stone of 1872, was instrumental in persuading Congress to establish Yellow­stone National Park. His inspiration here, however, was Florida’s landscape. In 1877 he traveled to St. Augustine with his wife Mary Nimmo Moran, a first-rate etcher and landscape painter in her own right. He used sketches and watercolor studies made in Florida to produce this canvas in his New Jersey studio, as was his practice.