She also exhibited her paintings of the White Mountains in New Hampshire, of North Carolina scenery and of foreign scenes, in New York City and Boston.

Susan's father, Nathan Hale, nephew and namesake of the patriot hero, was a lawyer and editor/owner of the Boston Daily Advertiser while her mother was also an author, translator and helped in editorial tasks.

When the family situation broke up in 1867, Susan and her sister Lucretia went abroad to stay with their brother Charles who was consul general of the United States in Egypt.

[2] In 1872, she decided she wanted to get the best training in watercolor she could, and went abroad again and studied art in Paris, France, and Weimar, Germany, for nearly a year.

This was not the first time Hale travelled abroad, but the fact that she was accompanied by her brother during her visit to Spain offered her security and better social regard.

[4] In Spain, Hale found a complex artistic landscape: Romanticism giving way to Realism and Costumbrismo (a predominantly Spanish style focused on custom and manners).

The author reflected in her texts the picturesque, the old and the mythical, and Spain, as many other Romantic travellers and writers had already affirmed, was the ideal place to find this artistic landscape.

Hale's attitude towards her time in Spain was open-minded, seeking to integrate herself in the culture by learning the language to communicate with Spaniards, eating the typical and ordinary food, and discovering the country from within, without letting foreign clichés or stereotypes influence her perception.

Hale narrates probably from her personal experience in the country, describing various locations in Spain, cultural insights on societal norms and daily life at the time.

In earlier years, she had spent winters working in Boston and traveled in the summer, sometimes accompanying well-known friends such as Thomas Gold Appleton and Frederic Edwin Church.

These colonialist impressions intrude in descriptions of Spanish manners or landscapes, for instance characterizing Spain as "the land of romance and sunshine.