A versatile nineteenth-century painter, Edmund C. Coates created landscapes, seascapes, portraits, and history paintings. Born in England, Coates spent his adult life in New York City, where he was a frequent exhibitor at the National Academy of Design. Working in the style of the Hudson River School, Coates produced beautiful, idealized images of the lakes and mountains of the Hudson River Valley and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, as well as romantic visions of ancient Italian ruins. He was closer in dates to the second generation of the Hudson River school, which included Frederic Edwin Church, John Frederick Kensett, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Albert Bierstadt, and David Johnson.
His work can be now seen in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Historical Society, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Shelburne Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery.