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Around 1805 Turner took a house by the Thames west of London, first at Hammersmith and then at Isleworth, and started doing something unusual for a painter of his standing. He carried oil paints out to the riverbank, and sometimes out onto the water in a small boat, and worked on the spot rather than back in the studio. This is one of those Thames sketches, made about 1808. He was already a full member of the Royal Academy by then and could name his price for a finished exhibition picture, and he sold none of these. They stayed in his studio until he died in 1851, and came to the nation with the rest of the Turner Bequest, which was finally settled in 1856.