Edward Moran, destined to become one of the most significant American painters of marine subjects, was born in England and immigrated with his family to Baltimore in 1844. He studied with his brother Peter Moran (1841–1914), James Hamilton (1819–1878), and Paul Weber (1823–1916) in Philadelphia, while working as a lithographer. After being elected an academician at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1862, he went back to England for further artistic training. Moran briefly returned to Philadelphia but moved to New York City, where he lived for the rest of his life, except for a visit to France in 1879. Moran was a member of the National Academy of Design, the American Society of Painters in Watercolors, and the Lotos Club, all in New York. He exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy from 1854 to 1888, at the National Academy from 1857 to 1895, at the Boston Athenaeum from 1858 to 1867. Moran made frequent sketching trips all along the East Coast, producing an occasional landscape but mainly painting the romantic seascapes for which he is best remembered today.