This watercolour shows the exterior of Astley's Riding School in 1777. Sergeant Major Philip Astley (1742-1814) was noted for his trick riding skills in the army, and after his discharge from the Light Dragoons in 1766, opened his first riding school in June 1768, in Halfpenny Hatch field, Lambeth. By 1770 Astley was operating from this amphitheatre, a simple wood structure with sheltered seats and an open riding ring which he built at the southern end of Westminster Bridge Road. Here he and his wife performed tricks on horseback to paying customers, at first with Astley's white charger Gibraltar, and later with a smaller horse, Billy. Astley was to spend 46 years working with equestrian entertainment, and came to be acknowledged as the father of modern circus.

The artist William Capon (1757-1827) was a Norwich-born scene-painter, architectural draughtsman and architect who lived in Westminster for thirty years, and was 20 when he painted this. He produced many topographical drawings of views in Westminster and had a strong interest in theatre, assisting in the building and decoration of the Italian Opera House in London's Haymarket from 1790 to 1791, and working as a scene painter at Drury Lane Theatre in 1794. He also made a drawing of the interior of Astley's Riding School in 1777, and both were reproduced in engravings by Charles John Smith (1803-1838)