Jasper Francis Cropsey created this pioneer landscape while living in London. His foreign audience found exotic appeal in the American pioneer theme, and Cropsey produced many works on the subject. A garden with distinctly American pumpkins and corn is visible at lower right. When Cropsey painted the scene, land across the country was being developed at an unprecedented pace. As if forecasting the end of frontier life, Cropsey signed his name on a rock near the garden that resembles a tipped-over gravestone.