Eight miles south of Edinburgh on the river Esk, Roslin (also spelt Roslyn or Rosslyn) has magnificent scenery, with a waterfall, a ruined castle perched at the end of a promontory overlooking the river, and a famous chapel in an ornate late-Gothic style. The picture was apparently never exhibited but dates from the later part of Redgrave's career when he abandoned genre subjects and became 'wholly a landscape painter.' So far as is known, Redgrave only visited Scotland once, in 1853, when he stayed at Alva, near Stirling, with Edward Cardwell, President of the Board of Trade, in connection with his work for the Department of Science and Art (see F.M. Redgrave, Richard Redgrave. A Memoir, 1891, p.93). Presumably he visited Roslin on the way up or down.

The picture shows Redgrave working within the tradition of the Romantic Movement, which had found in Roslin a potent symbol of its aspirations. Thomas Hearne based a topographical watercolour on a sketch made during a tour in Scotland with Sir George Beaumont in 1778 (Manchester City Art Gallery). Wordsworth was there with his sister and Sir Walter Scott in 1803, and Scott refers to the chapel and castle in the ballad 'Rosabelle' in the The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). David Roberts painted numerous studies of the chapel, two examples - a watercolour of 1830 and an oil exhibited at the RA in 1843 - being in the V&A. The building also made a great impact on the young John Ruskin, so much so that in old age he gave the title 'Roslyn Chapel' to a chapter in his autobiography, Praeterita.