Terrasse von Mortlake

William Moffatt owned a house called The Limes on the Thames at Mortlake, west of London, and he commissioned Turner to paint the view from his terrace twice, once as a summer morning and once as a summer evening. The evening picture went to the Royal Academy in 1827. On the varnishing days, when exhibitors were allowed to work on their canvases where they hung, Edwin Landseer looked at it, decided the parapet needed an accent, cut a small dog out of black paper and stuck it on. Turner came in later with his brushes, shifted the paper a little, worked a detail or two into it and left it. The dog is still paper, and a later director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington would not let the picture be cleaned in case it came away.