At the age of 14, he began to study law in the office of Frederick de Peyster, which he soon left to enter the studio of James Herring, and in less than a year he became a pupil of Samuel F. B. Morse, through whom he also enrolled at the National Academy of Design.

[1] His drawings in the antique class at the National Academy won him the silver medal, but, having joined the Presbyterian Church, he determined to enter its ministry.

Although extravagantly praised as an artist from the 1830s into the 1860s, Page's reputation suffered in later life because he changed his style so frequently and, more particularly, because technical characteristics of his painting method soon caused much of his work to darken excessively.

His work also includes a full-length portrait of Admiral David Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay (purchased by a committee in 1871, and presented to the emperor of Russia), the "Holy Family" (1837, now at the Boston Athenaeum) and "The Young Merchants" (now at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia).

[2] Among his many portraits, for which he was most noted, are those of Hiram Powers (painted in Florence about 1848), Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Charles P. Daly (1848, in New York Historical Society), James Russell Lowell, Josiah Quincy III, Gov.