Born in Philadelphia in 1886, Henry Asbury Rand attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1904 to 1908. In 1920 he moved to Shadowbrook Farm in Holicong, Pennsylvania, where his neighbor was George Sotter. He was a landscape painter primarily, inspired by his own property in Holicong, where he invited fellow artists to join him painting. A Quaker and a lifelong bachelor, Rand never married and did not sell his work. He bequeathed most of his paintings to a favorite nephew upon his death in 1961.

Rand's paintings were accepted in eleven annual exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1909 to 1931.