The skillfully drawn and nostalgic genre scenes of Jennie Augusta Brownscombe appealed to prevailing Victorian tastes in the late nineteenth century. After the death of her father in 1868, she supported herself through teaching, creating magazine and book illustrations, and selling the rights to reproduce her watercolors as prints, Christmas cards, and calendars. She later became a student at the Cooper Institute of Design for Woman and the National Academy of Design, and in 1875 was a founding member of the Art Students League in New York. Her studies brought her to France and Rome, and she exhibited in the United States and abroad.