One of numerous studies of Raby and the surrounding countryside, including Bishop Auckland and Streatlam, made in 1817 preparatory to the painting of 'Raby Castle, the Seat of the Earl of Darlington' exhibited at the R.A. 1818 (198; now Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore). A more detailed view in pencil only on ff.21v and 22v (continued on f.11r) was directly used as the basis for the painting, which is the last and grandest of Turner's topographical house-portraits in the eighteenth-century tradition (repr. Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, pl.58).