Krimmel painted the scene in 1815 at the encouragement of his friend Alexander Lawson, an engraver who commissioned the painting or purchased it to engrave. Lawson spent two years working on the engraving but for unknown reasons never completed it. In 1887, Lawson's daughter Mary donated the unfinished copperplate to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which made prints based on it. Collector James L. Claghorn donated Krimmel's watercolor version of the painting from 1816 to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1873. The Winterthur Museum, using funds offered for this purpose by Henry Francis du Pont, purchased the original painting in 1959, and it has remained in Winterthur's collection ever since.
