Taking his last breaths in the men’s ward of the Berks County Almshouse, Charles C. Hofmann (1821–1882) may have been thinking about the pain in his body or the poor living conditions he had endured during the latter portion of his life. Or perhaps the artist dwelled on the grass, trees, hills, and farms of the bucolic Schuylkill River along which he had wandered and painted for nearly twenty years.