Signed and dated 1776, and inscribed on the verso 'Bonend, Bucks', this pen and ink and watercolour by John Thomas Serres (1759–1825) shows a view of the paper mill at Bourne End, Buckinghamshire.

Born in London, Serres was the eldest son of Dominic Serres, R.A., a Gascon who had come to England as a naval prisoner of war around 1750 and subsequently became a founder member of the Royal Academy and one of the most successful marine artists of Georgian Britain. J.T. Serres trained under his father, first exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1776, and later became Marine Painter to H.R.H. the Duke of Clarence.

This early, dated topographical watercolour of a Buckinghamshire industrial subject offers a rarer, land-based counterpart to Serres's better-known marine work. Collectors of eighteenth-century British topographical watercolour and the Serres family will find this an early and precisely dated example from the very year of his Royal Academy debut.