This landscape dates from 1755-7 and is a fine example of Gainsborough's late Ipswich style. It can be compared closely with another of the same date and of almost identical size in the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal. In both compositions the artist has used highly finished details in the foreground, a soft treatment of the landscape in the centre and far distance, and fluffy clouds in a clear blue sky. Because of its shape and size, John Hayes considers the present picture to have been a specially commissioned work (loc.cit. I, p.63). The principal part of the picture, the left-hand side, is based on several studies taken from nature in the surrounding Suffolk countryside. An intriguing insight into Gainsborough's working methods for such landscapes is given by Reynolds in his Fourteenth Discourse: 'From the fields (Gainsborough) brought into his painting-room, stumps of trees, weeds, and animals of various kinds; and designed them, not from memory, but immediately from the objects. He even framed a kind of model of landskips (sic), on his table; composed of broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking glass, which he magnified and improved into rocks, trees, and water.' For the present picture studies were worked up into a drawing (private collection; Connecticut) which the artist then used in reverse for his painting, while studies for the cows and the milkmaid climbing over the stile are in the British Museum, in the Mellon Collection at Yale, and in a private collection.

The first owner, and possibly commissioner of this landscape, was Charles Jennens (1700-1773) whose path must have crossed with Gainsborough's through the artist's great love of and involvement with music. Jennens was a rich dilettante, rather arrogant in character, who acted as librettist to Handel for several years. They collaborated on 'Saul' (1735), 'Messiah' (1742) and 'Belshazzar' (1745), and Jennens also arranged for Handel Milton's 'L'Allegro', 'Il Penserose', and the third part of 'Il Moderato'. Jennens' personality and his obstinate character, which was only rivalled by his vanity, led to many difficulties between them, but they nonetheless managed to remain on friendly terms and work together. In his will Jennens bequeathed his library and large collections of works of art to his relatives, William Penn Assheton Curzon (an ancestor of Lord Howe) and the Earl of Aylesford, who also inherited Handel's manuscripts and musical scores.
When Gainsborough left Suffolk and went to live in Bath at the suggestion of Philip Thicknesse in 1759, his portraits began to take on a new grandeur and vivacity, and perhaps one of the most beautiful of this period is the portrait of Countess Howe, (Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood), which, together with its companion of her husband, the celebrated Admiral of the Fleet, (Trustees of the Howe settled Estates), were commissioned and painted in Bath in 1764. Richard Curzon, Earl Howe and 1st Baron Howe of Langar had taken up a post at the Admiralty, following his many successes at sea against the French. In 1758 he married Mary, daughter of Chiverton Hartopp, of Welby; they had three daughters, the eldest of whom Sophia Charlotte, inherited the Barony of Howe of Langar, and married the Hon. Penn Assheton Curzon. With this marriage the barony descended to her son Richard William Penn, created 1st Earl Howe.

Throughtout his life Gainsborough yearned to move away from painting portraits and concentrate on his real love landscapes. As Sir Henry Bate Dudley was to write after the artist's death, 'Nature was his teacher and the woods of Suffolk his academy'.