 Prentice grew up on a farm in Lewis County, New York By 1872, Prentice had traveled through the Adirondack Mountains, painting the views as well as the surrounding region.He opened his first studio as a landscape painter in Syracuse, New York in 1875.Self-taught artist Levi Wells Prentice is best known for his realistic still life compositions of fruit arranged within a landscape, or abundantly spilling from bushel baskets.