Born in Minsk, Russia, Bogdanove emigrated with his family to New York City in 1900. Immediately following his arrival in America, he began to study art, enrolling at the Cooper Union Institute of Art, the National Academy of Design, and the Columbia University School of Architecture. At Columbia, Bogdanove trained with the important muralist Francis Millet, who inspired him to explore this genre for himself. By 1912, Bogdanove had begun to receive commissions for murals in which he gallery addressed historical, educational, or moral themes and presented images in simple and graphic terms so that they could be quickly comprehended. His last mural, The Great Teachers, 1930, may today be found in Shepherd Hall at City College of The City of New York.

As his aspirations as a muralist were realized, Bogdanove increasingly devoted his free time, particularly the summers, to painting for himself. While his first paintings were allied to his murals, demonstrating academic styles and didactic messages, by the 1910s, he had begun to visit the countrysides of Connecticut and New Jersey, and to paint the landscapes he observed directly in a lively Impressionist style. In search of new subject matter, Bogdanove traveled to Maine for the first time in the summer of 1915. Staying at Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island, he painted the dramatic vistas of mountains plunging to the sea that had previously fascinated the Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church and the Luminist Fitz Hugh Lane.