Primarily self-taught, Joshua Shaw painted this idealized landscape while living in Bath, England. After residing briefly in London, Shaw immigrated to Philadelphia in 1817. There, he painted numerous landscapes glorifying a pastoral existence. Based upon earlier Italian landscape compositions, such pictures found an audience among Americans, especially those imbued with concepts of Jeffersonian agrarianism that privileged farmers as “the most valuable citizens.” Thomas Jefferson’s political and social philosophy would be put to the test by the mid 19th century, when the industrialized North and the agrarian South found themselves at loggerheads and the American Civil War erupted.