The subject, the youngest son of Philip Jeremiah Schuyler of Rhinebeck, New York, and Mary Anna (Sawyer) Schuyler, settled in New York City about 1830. His portrait, a gift to the Society from his daughters, was painted from life in Bonnat's studio in Paris.

Catalina was the daughter of Captain Johannes Schuyler and Elizabeth (Staats) Wendel Schuyler. She married Cornelius Cuyler (1697-1765) of Albany on December 9, 1726. Her portrait is one several portraits of members of the Dutch community of the Hudson Valley which are owned by The New-York Historical Society and attributed to the same anonymous artist, known as "The Schuyler Painter," on the basis of style.

The Society's study is probably the copy commissioned of Louis Phillippe in 1823 from the artist Guillame Frederic Ronmy from Montpensier's lost original.

In August 1841 Cole departed for his second trip abroad. His travels took him to England, Paris, through the Alps, then to Rome. In the summer of 1842 he visited Sicily, where he encountered the view that inspired this painting. Cole wrote of having painted a small view of the Temple of Segesta, and his 1844 description of the scenery in The Knickerbocker suggests that the N-YHS painting is in large part an accurate, unembellished view: "the broad slopes of an ample valley lie before the traveler, which though almost treeless, are waving with beans, and grain and grass. In the depth, is a river meandering among fragrant oleanders; on the left, the valley is intersected by a range of distant mountains; on the right is a beautiful bay of the Mediterranean. Across the valley the mountains form a green amphitheatre, and high in the its remotest part is seen the Temple of Segeste [sic]." The Temple, built in the late fifth century, is one of the best preserved in Magna Graecia. In keeping with Cole's description, it crowns a distant hill. In another painting, The Temple of Segesta with the Artist Sketching of ca. 1843 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) Cole made the structure a focal point, but here it is a distant jewel, almost blending into the rocky landscape. In keeping with the picturesque tradition that dominated American landscape painting, Cole framed the scene with large waving palm trees on the left and an outcropping of rock on the right. In the foreground, goats frolic in familial groupings, perhaps alluding to their human counterparts in the dwellings scattered throughout the scene, and a cloaked peasant observes a pair at right. The mist rolling out of the valley behind the temple suggests the vastness of the landscape. Cole exhibited several European scenes at the National Academy of Design in New York upon his return, but not this one. The artist presented it to the New York Gallery of the Fine Arts, an organization devoted to displaying the collection of Cole's friend and patron Luman Reed, who had died in 1836. It was exhibited there in 1844 and praised as "one of his finest landscapes."

The subject was the eldest son of Captain Johannes Schuyler and Elizabeth (Staats) Wendel Schuyler. He lived in Saratoga, Albany County, and was murdered there by a French and Indian raiding party in November 1745. His portrait is one several portraits of members of the Dutch community of the Hudson Valley which are owned by The New-York Historical Society and attributed to the same anonymous artist, known as "The Schuyler Painter," on the basis of style.