As FitzGerald was about to turn forty, he reached a level of artistic excellence that would allow him to move beyond his early artistic influence and elevate his work to new heights. Doc Snyder’s House, recognized by many as his masterwork, is an excellent example of the extraordinary intensity that FitzGerald brought to his working process. Transcending photographic verisimilitude, the painting is as close as FitzGerald ever came to making the “picture a living thing, one great thought made up of many details but all subordinated to the whole.”