Elliott’s work progressed through several stylistic phases. He first painted in general imitation of GILBERT STUART. While in New York during the 1840s he sought a rich, romantic style. In the 1850s and 1860s Elliott worked in the style most distinctively his own, one of firm and frank realism to some extent shaped by the development of photographic portraiture. With its plain background setting and distinct plastic figure, the museum’s portrait of an unknown gentleman is characteristic of Elliott’s full realist style. Elliott was thought to be best in his portraits of men particularly, as observed by Tuckerman (1867, p. 300), when the sitters have "strong, practical natures," as this one seems to have.

After the Jacksonian presidency (1829–37), the adolescent country began an aggressive foreign policy of territorial expansion, exemplified by the success of the Mexican-American War (1846–48). Economic growth, spurred by new technologies such as the railroad and telegraph, assisted the early stages of empire building. As a comfortable and expanding middle class began to demonstrate its wealth and power, a fervent nationalist spirit was celebrated in the writings of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Artists such as Emanuel Leutze produced history paintings re-creating the glorious past of the relatively new country. Such idealizations ignored the mounting political and social differences that threatened to split the country apart. The Civil War slowed development, affecting every fiber of society, but surprisingly was not the theme of many paintings. The war’s devastation did not destroy the American belief in progress, and there was an undercurrent of excitement due to economic expansion and increased settlement of the West.
During the postwar period Americans also began enthusiastically turning their attention abroad. They flocked to Europe to visit London, Paris, Rome, Florence, and Berlin, the major cities on the Grand Tour. Art schools in the United States offered limited classes, so the royal academies in Germany, France, and England attracted thousands of young Americans. By the 1870s American painting no longer evinced a singleness of purpose. Although Winslow Homer became the quintessential Yankee painter, with his representations of country life during the reconstruction era, European aesthetics began to infiltrate taste.