Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1830, Granville Perkins became a scene painter at the age of fifteen, working with the Ravel family on theatrical productions such as Mazulua, The Green Monster, and Jacko or the Brazilian Ape.
In 1856 he exhibited a painting based on his travels, Cape Croix, Cuba, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
[4] Perkins' illustrations appeared in a variety of books including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish[5] and Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie.
[6] Four of his landscape drawings were engraved for the elegant gift book Picturesque America, edited by William Cullen Bryant.
[9] In 1870, he again sought tropical subjects for his brush, this time traveling from New York to California and from there by ship around Cape Horn.