Completed in 1867, it is based on preliminary sketches made by the artist at Niagara Falls and on a sepia photograph.

He had visited the falls several times in July and late August the previous year, making a number of pencil and oil sketches from different points of view.

Following this, it was exhibited at major cities on the Eastern seaboard, toured Britain twice and was selected for the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

[2] Niagara Falls, from the American Side is the only major work by Frederic Edwin Church which is in a public collection in Europe.

[8] Church was a member of the Hudson River School, a group of landscape artists, whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism.