[2] Painted during a time of increasing American interest in unspoiled nature—Thoreau's Walden was published in 1854—there are no signs of human activity in this landscape; the only animal life is a small bird perched at left.

The sky is painted in skillful gradations of purples, oranges, and yellows,[3] and reflects the influence of the popular English landscapist J. M. W. Turner on Church.

In terms of the Luminist style, with which Church is sometimes associated, the artistic achievement in the painted sky is the culmination of his many earlier pictures of sunsets and sunrises.

David C. Huntington, Church's "re-discoverer" in the 1960s, writes that "there is no [longer a] surfeit of pigment; no unnatural border inadvertently solidifies the cloud vapors ...

Critics described it as a "scene unhistoric, with no other interest than that of a wilderness, without human association of any kind" and "Nature with folded hands, kneeling at her evening prayer".

[4] The American wilderness and turbulent sky pictured here, as night descends, have been interpreted apocalyptically, as a metaphor for a country falling into discord on the brink of the Civil War.

It was inherited by his daughter Mary Garrett, and sold to family friend (and John Taylor Johnston's son-in-law) Robert de Forest.