The rise of the British School in the late eighteenth century, with pure landscape subjects at its core, was linked Romanticism and notions of the Sublime. The emphasis on watercolour as an independent discipline, its portability and the artist’s necessary skills to work quickly were closely intertwined. These picturesque landscapes often elicited a nationalist response.

The Napoleonic wars (1792–1815) had had cut off access to the Continent for more than two decades. Travel within Britain, rather than the Grand Tour of previous generations, led to a greater appreciation of local subjects, as opposed to the more classical, and idealised, scenes traditionally emphasised by the academies. JMW Turner’s painting was central, as was the work of Joseph Wright of Derby and, later, Richard Parkes Bonington’s port and harbour scenes.

In 1870, with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, Monet fled Paris. In London he sought out the great landscapes of Turner and his depictions of the fugitive effects of light and atmosphere, revelling in British artists’ approach to working outdoors.