Johann Hermann Carmiencke followed in the footsteps of painters such as Thomas Cole and Jasper Francis Cropsey, who were inspired by the wilderness landscape along the Hudson River in New York. He spent many summers sketching and painting along the river and in the Catskills and Adirondacks, then created finished paintings in his studio. This painting shows the Hudson Valley near the small village of Cold Spring, just across the river from West Point. The subdued light and hazy purple hills evoke an early summer morning, before the sun has had a chance to warm the earth.