Born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, Dow first trained in Boston and then traveled to Paris where he enrolled in the Académie Julian. Upon his return in 1887, Dow began studying the prints of the Japanese artist Hokusai and was appointed assistant curator of the Japanese collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1893. In 1911-12, Dow traveled though the American southwest and the following year he exhibited seventeen Grand Canyon pictures, including The Destroyer. Dow's painting style merged elements of Japonisme and Arts and Crafts principles of pure design, and in so doing he aligned the conventions of nineteenth-century landscape painting with ideas from eastern aestheticism.