This work is datable to the first half of the 1770s. The bush at the centre of the picture is comparable with the foliage on the tree at Staplehill Farm, dated 1773 (FT034). Like Staplehill, this picture is clearly complete and ready for display, rather than a sketch to be used to create a studio work. The location is unclear, although it has certain similarities to Towne’s depiction of Canonteign (FT031).

The presence and use of the very neatly drawn figure—typical of the 1770s drawing style of John Hamilton Mortimer’s Salvator Rosa-inspired “banditti”—give the piece an ambitiousness beyond the limits of its overt subject matter. In contrast to other figures in Towne’s early works, the man is not a bit-part, decorative addition to the scene, but the central element. Towne was borrowing some of Rosa’s solitary and gloomy vision for his depiction of a domestic landscape. It may be that the figure here was added by another artist, a common practice in the 1770s, as it is not typical of Towne’s weak figure drawing (for instance in FT200 and FT789).

Reviewing the 1946 Fine Art Society exhibition for the Burlington Magazine, Iolo Williams noted this work among a group by Towne: “The most notable of the drawings by Towne is a large Woody Landscape in monochrome save for a single pale coloured figure in the foreground, the remainder are mostly late examples, weaker than his early work but often with considerable charm of line and colour.”