An extensive wooded river landscape, with a traveller on horseback, a mule and dog in the foreground and cottages beyond

George Barret was one of the best known Irish landscape painters of his generation. He was born in Dublin, where he trained, but moved to London, in 1762, where he hoped to find a wider market for his work. He sent a View of the Waterfall at Powerscourt and a View in the Dargle, both of which he had painted in Ireland, along with other landscapes, to the exhibition at the Society of Artists in 1764 and in the same year gained the premium of fifty pounds given by that Society for the best landscape for the Landscape with Figures which he exhibited at the Free Society. His compatriot and fellow artist James Barry, R.A., wrote, in a letter of 1765, that: 'My friend and fellow-countryman, Barret, does no small honour to landscape painting among us; I have seen nothing to match his last year's premium picture'. Barret's landscapes were widely admired and fashionable in aristocratic circles. He earned a considerable income from his pictures although it was never enough to counter his extravagance. This landscape with its diffused light is characteristic of his work.