Beginning in 1836 Richardt studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art under the architect and designer Gustav Friedrich Hetsch, the historical painter J. L. Lund and the classical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

[1] In 1847, he received a five-year stipend from the crown, on the condition that he deliver one architectural and one landscape painting each year to the royal collection.

They lived first in the town of Niagara Falls, N.Y., where the artist again produced canvases depicting the great waterfall and the surrounding area.

For the remaining twenty years of his life Richardt was active as a painter of California landscapes with a concentration on the San Francisco Bay Area.

New York Senator Charles Schumer, the Chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, stated why he chose the painting: "For me as a New Yorker, Niagara Falls never fails to inspire a tremendous awe for the natural beauty of our great country.

The drawings were considered to be lost, until the 1990s when American scholar and cultural historian Melinda Young Stuart located them in the possession of Justine van Hemert Keller, the grandchild of Richardt's stepson.

Over 500 of the original drawings, on which Richardt's paintings and lithographs were based, are preserved in the archives of Denmark's Nationalmuseet, a gift of the artist's great-granddaughter.

A copy of this book was presented as a gift by the Danish prime minister's wife to the American First Lady when she came to Copenhagen on an official visit.