After the death of his father in 1832, the Glasgow born James Fairman emigrated to New York City. Ten years later he studied with Frederick Agate (1807 1844) at the National Academy of Design. Fairman visited England in 1851 and returned to America during the Civil War to serve in the military for two years. After the war, he maintained a studio in New York City until 1871, when he returned to Europe, studying and traveling in Dusseldorf, Paris, and London. In 1880 81 he left Europe for Chicago, where he stayed for one year before returning to New York, where he remained for the rest of his life. Fairman exhibited at the National Academy of Design, at the Brooklyn Art Association, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He was awarded a prize in St. Louis in 1867 for his painting Sunset in the Androscoggin Valley Maine. Always a landscapist, Fairman depicted several locations in Europe, including the Wetterhorn in Switzerland and Caernarvon Castle in Wales, as well as views of Scotland, England, the Mediterranean coast, and the Holy Land. In this country, he painted Lake Winnipisiogee in New Hampshire, the Adirondacks, and several sites in Maine, including Bethel, Shelburne, and Bear River Notch. Among his many paintings of the Hudson River from New York City to areas farther north are: The Hudson at Saugerties, Storm King on the Hudson, Hudson River near Milton, Sunset on the Hudson Highlands, The Hudson at Cold Spring, and Sunset in the Bay of New York see the pamphlet Pictures Painted by James Fairman, A.M., with the Names of Possessors, and the National Museum of American Art's Index to American Art Exhibition Catalogues from the Beginning Through the 1876 Centennial Year [Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1986], vol. 2, pp. 1205 6).