 They create a sense of foreboding using a vast horizon and an ominous hanging branch.Based on the date of the Strother engraving, this painting was probably painted near the outbreak of the Civil War; a sense of dread is visible in the figure's "confrontation with the omnipotence of nature and God".Art collector Maxim Karolik bought the painting from J.B. Neumann for $650 in 1943; it was one of the first 19th-century paintings he acquired.