Elizabeth Heil was born in Ohio. She studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati under Caroline Lord, Henrietta Wilson, Thomas S. Noble, and Otto Walter Beck. She worked in Akron, then Chicago, then Seattle. She married Kentucky artist Stephen Alke in 1912 and settled in New Richmond, Ohio, on the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Stephen's hometown of Augusta, Kentucky. This painting is Alke at her most Twachtman-esque.