An extensive river landscape, possibly the River Wye from Wyndcliffe, with Chepstow and the River Severn beyond, an artist and shepherds in the foreground

The present lot appears to relate closely in topography to that of the River Wye and it's confluence with the River Severn. The only discrepancy is that the Lancaut peninsula, which would normally appear in the lower left foreground, has been replaced by an enlarged River Wye which may have been in flood at the time. However, more likely is that the artist has used some invention in his interpretation of the scene in order to balance the composition. Such refinement reflects the romantic aesthetic of the ‘picturesque’ - a notion which had been brought to the fore in 1782 in William Gilpin's 'Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales, etc'. The viewpoint, popularised by Gilpin’s publication, became an important spot for both the expanding number of tourists and artists visiting the Wye valley in the late 18th and early 19th century. The poet Samuel Coleridge Taylor described the view as "the whole world imagined in its vast circumference" and Joseph Farington also describes visiting the spot in the diaries of his Wye tour of 1803.