This highly Italianate, Claudian landscape is in fact a product of Turner's visit to Devon in 1813 (see Nos.124-6), as was recognised in a review known from a press-cutting in the Victoria and Albert Museum, annotated 5 May 1815 but without the name of the publication: ‘Notwithstanding the buildings are Italian, the scene is found in Devonshire.' Further evidence comes from two people who were with Turner for part of this tour. Cyrus Redding 'traced three distinct snatches of scenery on the river Tamar’ when he saw the picture later in Turner's gallery and mentions how 'Turner was struck with admiration at the bridge above the Wear, which he declared altogether Italian'. According to Charles Eastlake, ‘The bridge . . . is Calstock Bridge; some mining works are indicated in the middle distance. The extreme distance extends to the mouth of the Tamar, the harbour of Hamoaze, the hills of Mount Edgumbe, and those on the opposite side of Plymouth Sound. The whole scene is extremely faithful' (Thornbury 1862, 1, pp.210-11, 219). There are drawings of the countryside represented but not actually copied in the picture in the Plymouth, Hamoaze sketchbook (T.B.CXXXI), and a small composition sketch in the ‘Woodcock Shooting' sketchbook (T.B.CXXIX-52), but the composition is really a development of one of Turner's paintings of classical subjects in an Italian setting, the 'Mercury and Hersé’ exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811 (sold at Christie's 16 June 1961 (65), where repr., bought by Agnew's). Here however the foreground is occupied merely by an unpretentious genre scene.

The painting was well received in the press but Sir George Beaumont was not mollified by its traditional appearance, Farington reporting him as saying on 5 June 1815 that 'it appeared to Him weak and like the work of an Old man, one who no longer saw or felt colour properly; it was all of peagreen insipidity’. Referring bitterly to 'the Portrait Painters who are particularly loud in their praise' he could only repeat ‘that I never knew a Portrait Painter excepting Sir Joshua Reynolds who had a right feeling and judgment of Landscape Painting'. Perhaps because of the criticism from this influential connoisseur Turner failed to sell the picture, though Dawson Turner asked about it in 1818 when the price was 550 guineas.