Edward L. Custer was a portrait, animal, and landscape painter.  He was born in Basel, Switzerland, on January 24, 1837.  Custer came to the United States in 1846 or 1847 with his family at about the age of ten, living first in Syracuse, NY and later in Manchester, NH.  His father became a doctor while in Manchester.  

He went to Germany to study in 1860 and again in the 1870's.  The Aldine (?newspaper) for 1876-77 noted that he painted "a landscape studied in New Hampshire in early autumn, [which] is poetic in color and artistic in treatment."  He exhibited from 1848 to 1869 at the Boston Athenaeum, and later at the National Academy of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  In his later years he was best known for his studies of cattle.  Custer died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 8, 1881.