Castello di Warwick, fronte orientale dal cortile esterno

Canaletto's customers were English, and in the 1740s they stopped coming. The War of the Austrian Succession made crossing Europe difficult and the Grand Tour largely dried up, so in 1746 he did the obvious thing and followed the market to London, where he stayed for the better part of nine years. Francis Greville, Lord Brooke, was one of the patrons he found there. Brooke was pouring money into modernising Warwick Castle and laying out its grounds, and he wanted the place recorded the way Canaletto recorded the Grand Canal. The painter worked at Warwick in the late 1740s and produced five paintings and three drawings of it, this one finished some years later. It shows the east front across the court, with Guy's Tower and the clock tower over the gate, and the set went to Brooke's London house rather than to the castle itself.