Syon House was originally a Brigittine Convent founded by King Henry V in the early 15th Century and moved to Isleworth in 1431. It was given to the Duke of Somerset after the Dissolution in 1546 and then to John Dudley, Earl of Northumberland. In 1604 it was inherited by the Percys, Earls of Northumberland, who altered the house to incorporate an outer arcade of eleven bays on the East Side in the Italian manner, which are traditionally connected with repairs carried out by Inigo Jones in 1632. By the 18th Century the house was owned by Sir Hugh Smithson, later 1st Duke of Northumberland, who commissioned Robert Adam to carry out extensive alterations. From the early date only the stables and one or two outbuildings remain, and the whole exterior of the house was completely refaced in 1825. The house is topped by the lead lion which was originally at Old Northumberland House in the Strand, and moved to Syon House, when the London house was demolished. The grounds include an elegant Boat House, which it has recently been discovered is by Capability Brown.

Wilson painted Syon House from Richmond Gardens several times, but it has not been established which of these he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776. Constable lists three other known versions of the present picture, all showing the house and grounds bathed in sunlight - in the Glenconner and Glass collections, and with Arthur Tooth & Sons; these differ in many of the details from each other. He also painted the subject in an evening light and the prime version of this is in the collection of Sir Brinsley Ford (Constable, pl.54b); again, several versions are recorded, three interestingly owned by the artists William Daniell, Richard Westall and Turner. Of all Wilson's landscapes, this view for special praise: 'We consider this landscape.... as one of the most striking proofs of Wilson's genuis, as it conveys not only the image, but the feeling, of nature, and excites a new interest