Peter De Wint (1784-1849) abandoned plans for a medical career after receiving drawing lessons from a local Staffordshire landscape painter. In 1802 he entered a seven year apprenticeship with the portraitist and engraver John Raphael Smith but only actually served four of these years. De Wint's interests lay in landscape painting and the condition of his early release from the apprenticeship of Smith was that he did 18 landscapes in oil for him. While he exhibited landscapes in oil at both the Royal Academy (13 between 1807 and 1828) and the British Institution (11 between1808 and 1824) he worked mainly in water colour, exhibiting 417 works at the Old Watercolour Society between 1808 and 1849.

The view depicted in this painting has never been identified, nor is the work identifiable with the title of any painting exhibited in the artist's lifetime. It is one of 8 oil paintings by De Wint in the V&A's collection and was bequeathed by the artist's granddaughter, Miss Harriet Helen Tatlock, in 1921.