The first director of the Museum of New Mexico, 1918, in Santa Fe, Sheldon Parsons was a painter of local residents, plaza scenes, and landscapes.  He applied Impressionist techniques to convey the New Mexico landscape, and his work became popular.

He was born in Rochester, New York, and studied at the National Academy of Design with William Merritt Chase, Edgar Ward, and Will Low. He was married to noted photographer Caroline Reed Parsons, and from 1895 to 1912, was a much sought-after New York portrait painter, whose subjects included prominent persons such as President McKinley and Susan B Anthony.  He also won much recognition for his autumn scenes of the countryside of Westchester County.

Seeking a new start and a healthier climate, Parsons drove West with his daughter to Santa Fe. When he experienced the vivid colors and soft architecture of the Southwest, he never painted figures again. A Santa Fe art colony was not established until 1921, but Parsons became one of the earliest resident artists and was known for his "happy, serene, impressionist landscapes."

Once in New Mexico, Parsons found the terrain of New Mexico irresistible. In fact the impact of the dry, pure air and bare landscape was sufficiently strong to change Parsons' entire style. Parsons gave up portraiture and never again returned to figure painting. His entire focus became the skies, mountains and soft, pliable adobe architecture of Northern New Mexico. He rendered the contours of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with a soft brush and nearly pastel earth tones.

In 1919, several years into their life in Santa Fe, Sara met and married the artist Victor Higgins. Even though the marriage only lasted four years, it has been said that an influence of Higgins can be seen in some of Parsons's best work from the '20s and '30s.

Parsons' career spanned an era. He was born in the same year as Irving Couse, a charter member of the Taos Society of Artists, one year after the end of the Civil War. At his death in September of 1943, abstract expressionism was just beginning in New York City. Through most of these decades, Parsons' style, however, remained placid, serene, settled, and calm, just as he had found the landscape when he first reached New Mexico.