This drawing relates to a series of works executed at Portland Bill near Weymouth in Dorset from Piper's first visit to Weymouth in 1929 up to his last with Richard Ingrams in 1981. This drawing was executed for the film 'John Piper' directed by John Read and broadcast on the BBC on 30 March, 1955. Piper is shown working on a drawing and then a painting of Portland, commenting on the need to rearrange the landscape 'so as to make an elaborate symbol of the place; not a view, but a history'. John Read described the atmosphere of Portland in his film 'the place has an abandoned air. A litter of isolated objects lie about, scatttered over the shore and landscape. Rocks and lobster pots. Old boats on a deserted coast. A new lighthouse, and stones piles like toy bricks. Heavy derricks on empty quays. The village streets have an unfamiliar look, and strange houses are strung out in a line, as in a child's painting. They pick their way across a surface pitted with disused quarries, huts and heaps of rubble. A broken skyline is made untidy with rooftops, and the cables, poles, masts and aerials that link together this scattered community'
(See R. Ingram, Piper's Places, London, 1983, pp.25-6 and D. Fraser Jenkins, John Piper, Tate Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, London, 1983, p.122)