Athough Watter Launt Palmer was only seventeen years old in 1871, when he painted this canvas, he had already developed a vision distinct from his two monumental influences. In Albany in the Snow he mimicked neither the romanticism of his father, the sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer, nor the heroic idealism of his employer, the painter Frederic Church. Instead, Palmer conjured a commonplace scene that perhaps speaks more directly to us than do the works of his illustrious mentors.