Robert Macpherson was trained as a surgeon in Edinburgh, but took up landscape painting after moving to Rome in the early 1840s for health reasons. A noted connoisseur and art dealer, a friend of many artists and writers, Macpherson learned photography in 1851 and quickly became successful as a photographer of Roman architecture, antiquities, and scenic views. During his twenty year career, he made more than three hundred large-scale views of Rome and the surrounding countryside.