The sheet was mounted, before the drawing had been started, on another slightly larger sheet showing a margin all round of about I 1/4 in on which are a number of colour trials.

Turner had lost his father on 21 September 1829, and an old friend, Harriet Wells, on I January 1830. His fellow Academician George Dawe had also only recently died, as he mentioned in a letter to George Jones written on 22 January:

Dear Jones, - I delayed answering yours until the chance of this finding you in Rome, to give you some account of the dismal prospect of Academic affairs, and of the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourne from whence no traveller returns. Alas, only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pallbearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon; my poor father's death proved a heavy blow upon me, and has been followed by others of the same dark kind. However, it is something to feel that gifted talent can be acknowledged by the many who yesterday waded up to their knees in snow and muck to see the funeral pomp swelled up by carriages of the great ... (Quoted by Finberg, 1961, P.320).