Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Louis Rémy Mignot was one of few Southerners to succeed in the competitive New York art world. During the war years, however, Mignot found himself torn between his Southern allegiances and his life in the North. In 1862, Mignot arranged an auction of forty-seven of his paintings to raise funds for passage overseas. The haunting Sunset, Winter was among these works. Mignot settled in England, never to return. He died of smallpox at the age of thirty-nine.