Rhoda Bickerdike, née Dawson (1897-1992) came from a family of artists. Her father Nelson, (1859-1945) was a landscape artist and worked with her mother, Edith, designing metalwork. Rhoda Bickerdike worked as a landscape painter, exhibiting at the New English Art Club and the Royal Academy. In 1930 she went to Newfoundland to work as a missionary. She returned to Britain in 1933 and staged two exhibitions of the paintings she had made during her travels. She went again to Newfoundland in 1934, staying in St. John's.

This watercolour of a Newfoundland village was probably made in the mid 1930s during a visit that the artist made to this region of Canada. The artist has drawn an outline for the scene in black chalk before painting over it in washes of watercolour in greens, blues and purples. The use of washes, combined with the soft tones of colour, conveys the peaceful mood of the village. Our eye is directed around the composition by the use of red on the boat in the bottom left hand corner, and for the jumpers of the figures in the right mid ground. The viewpoint of the scene has a feel of a snapshot of everyday life conveying the intimacy with which Bickerdike knew the landscape through the time that she spent in Newfoundland.