Reinagle trained under Allan Ramsay as a portraitist💃 but later specialized in landscape painting. In the 1790s he worked in Italy where he was patronized by, amongst others, the Earl of Bristol, the eccentric Earl-Bishop of Derry. In Rome he met the French painter Simon Denis, who encouraged him to sketch outdoors in oil.

According to the inscription, which is 🅷written in the artist's daughter's hand, the present oil sketch was painted in 1805.