Edwin White was born in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1817, and first began to study painting in Connecticut. He subsequently trained at the National Academy of Design in New York before traveling to Europe, beginning with a sojourn in Paris in 1850 to study at the Academie des Beaux-Arts. Upon his return to the United States, White dedicated much of his career to depicting scenes of Southern history, as well as portraits, including those of Black figures, such as the present work of 1860. Among White's most eminent works is Thoughts of the Future (Thoughts of Liberia Emancipation) (1861, New York Historical, New York), which similarly depicts a Black figure, likely a freeman, as the subject is reading. On the precipice of Civil War, White's images of Black figures in America are particularly poignant, offering intimate and sympathetic portrayals of those often overlooked. White's works are housed in numerous institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.