Thomas Lochlan Smith came to the United States at a young age. A pupil of George Boughton in Albany New York, he opened a studio there in 1859. Three years later, he moved to New York, where he specialized in winter landscapes. Smith was elected an Academy Associate in 1869. During the following years, he spent his summers at a country home in the Onondaga region of upstate New York. After his death in New York City in 1884, his fellow members of the Academy noted in the Minutes, "The solemn quiet and repose of the passing day and the closing year, were in accord with his thoughtful temperament, and he depicted their weird beauty with the truthfulness of a devout and living worshipper. He lived alone in the shadow and seclusion of his studio, his dreams and fancies supplying the place of more real and stirring events."