An 1877 graduate of Columbia University's School of Mines, Robert W. Van Boskerck received his artistic education from Robert Swain Gifford and Alexander Wyant. As a landscapist, he preferred quiet, settled scenes drawn from his travels at home and abroad. During the early 1880s, he was concerned with views of New Jersey and Long Island, but trips overseas acquainted him with Holland, France, and England, countries whose landscape he often painted. Throughout the last decade of his artistic activity, he executed views of Adirondack scenery in Keene Valley, New York. Despite his relatively conservative landscape style, Van Boskerck was elected to the Society of American Artists in 1887. His interests included a devotion to horseback riding.
