Known as a painter of dramatic and romantic western scenes, he was born in Philadelphia to a family of career military people including his grandfather, Ralph Izard, a Revolutionary War hero. It was expected that Charles would be a military man, but he grew to prefer painting trips in the Hudson River Valley to sitting in classes at West Point Academy. In the mid-1830s, he studied briefly at the National Academy of Design, earning a reputation for sporting and domestic genre scenes. He first exhibited at the Academy in 1838 and became an elected Associate in 1839.

In 1840, he traveled West, having seen an exhibition of Indian paintings of George Catlin. He also visited his brother who was a military officer at Fort Crawford in Prairi...