A rare and large-scale bodycolour view by Paul Sandby (1731–1809), a founder member of the Royal Academy and widely regarded as the father of English watercolour painting. This view looks across the Thames from Crown Corner, Windsor, towards Eton College, with stonemasons at work in the foreground – one of a group of Windsor views Sandby produced in the 1760s and 1770s that became a mainstay of his exhibited work.

A closely related drawing is held by the British Museum, and another version of this celebrated composition is in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, underlining the significance of Windsor subjects within Sandby's output.

This remarkable bodycolour painting belongs to a large group of views in and around Windsor produced by Paul Sandby in the 1760s and 1770s, and at one time belonged to a set of four views owned by Sir William Parsons in 1813. Sandby captures this view across the south bank of the River Thames from Crown Corner, Windsor: on the river a barge sails past Eton, and in the foreground a mother and child walk up the bank while three stonemasons cut and chisel stone. A related mason also appears in Sandby's drawing Windsor, East view from Crown Corner at the British Museum (accession no 1878,0713.1280). The best-known version of this vista is at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (Niveson loan), exhibited in The Great Age of British Watercolours 1750-1880 (London, R.A. and Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1993). A third version was recently with Andrew Clayton-Payne, London.