History painter Alfred Wordsworth Thompson was born in 1840 in Baltimore, studying at Newton University. By the time of the Civil War, Thompson was an artist for the Illustrated London News and Harper's Weekly, interested in events in Virginia. But his interest was apparently not very strong, for, in 1861, he went to Paris to study art, eventually at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1864, exhibiting at the Salon of 1865.

Returning to New York City in 1868, he exhibited at the National Academy of Design in that year, becoming an Associate in 1875. His realistic, brightly colored "Ruins of the Palace of St. Cloud in the Winter of 1871", he was able to gift to the Academy upon becoming a member, and it became well ...