It is thought that Daly painted these preparatory studies during his student days at University of Colorado (1933-37) when his teacher took students on field trips. Notes found with the paintings suggest that Daly was envisioning a series of large wooden box panels each which would contain several scaled-up versions of these paintings. There is no evidence that he worked on this project beyond the painting of the studies which were discovered together in a spiral watercolor pad in 2022 in Daly’s residence.
