Gifford was an American landscape painter belonging to the second generation of Hudson River school artists. Based in New York City with a studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building, Gifford took annual summer trips to the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and other scenic locations in New England. This sketchbook accompanied the artist on his expedition in 1859 to New Hampshire and Maine, where he drew sites such as Dixville Notch, the White Mountains, and Peaks Island, Casco Bay. Gifford used such graphite studies as the basis for oil paintings worked up in his studio, such as A Home in the Wilderness (1866).