A signed drawing in the Museum's collection identifies Boston real estate magnate Loren Delbert Towle as the original client for this monumental window, intended to be installed in the massive manor house he was building. Tiffany utilized virtually every available type of glass and technique to give this window extraordinary verisimilitude. Mottled glass recreates intense sunlight as filtered through yellow and orange autumn leaves. Confetti glass, embedded with tiny paper-thin flakes of glass in different colors, adds realism to the foliage. Similarly, boldly marbleized glass simulates the large gray and white boulders. Textured ripple glass evokes the movement of the water in the foreground, and by plating several layers on the reverse, the artist created the impression of distant, misty mountain peaks.

The River of Life, typically a subject for memorial windows, may have been prophetic, for Towle's premature death in 1924 precluded its installation in his nearly completed mansion. The estate was presumably not able to honor the contract for the installation of the window, at which time, perhaps at Tiffany's request, Museum president Robert W. de Forest purchased it and donated it to the new American Wing.