At the time when Lane began his employment at Pendleton's, it was common practice for aspiring American artists—especially those who, like Lane, could not afford a more formal education in the arts by traveling to Europe or by attending one of the prestigious American art academies, such as New York's National Academy of Design or Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts—to seek work as a lithographer, this being the next logical step in their pursuit of a career in the arts. As for why such employment was beneficial to the budding artist, art historian James A. Craig, in his book "Fitz H. Lane: An Artist's Voyage through Nineteenth-Century America", the most comprehensive account of Lane's life and career, offers this illuminating description of the career evolution of the typical lithographer: