As a boy, Worthington was an avid trapper and by the age of sixteen, had made $400 from trapping animals, preparing, and selling their pelts (approx.

Often, in the coldest nights of winter, in rain, in snow and sleet, have I got out of my warm bed and gone sometimes as far as three miles to look after my traps and been home again in daylight, to begin my regular duties on my father's farm.

Arriving in Germany he settled at the Düsseldorf Academy, a major art school of the period, and studied with Emanuel Leutze.

Whittredge spent nearly ten years in Europe, meeting and traveling with other important artists including Sanford Gifford.

He returned to the United States in 1859 and settled in New York City where he launched his career as a landscape artist painting in the Hudson River School style.

The trip resulted in some of Whittredge's most important works—unusually oblong, sparse landscapes that captured the stark beauty and linear horizon of the Plains.

I cared more for them than for the mountains... Whoever crossed the plains at that period, notwithstanding its herds of buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer and fleet rabbits, could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence."