This seems to be the earliest version of this much repeated composition, which culminated in the large watercolours of 1828, in the Manchester City Art Galleries (repr. in colour, The Great Age of Bristish Watercolours, 1750-1880, exh.cat., London, Royal Academy, and Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1993, pl.190) and 1829, in the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (reps. M. Rajnai, John Sell Cotman, 1782-1842, exh.cat., Arts Council tour, 1982-3, pp.122-3 no.92); all follow the same disposition of foreground figures. Cotman first visited Mont Saint Michel from Avranches on 2 August 1817, staying there overnight. On the second he 'did not sketch as I should have done, alert the tide might rise', but on the third he 'sketched two views' (reprinted in M. Rajnai, John Sell Cotman: Drawings of Normandy in Norwich Castle Museum, 1975, p.13). He was there again the following year, on 29 August 1818, and again from 21 to 26 September 1820.
This drawing is also the basis for Cotman's own etching, published with the date 1 October 1821, in Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, by John Sell Cotman; accompanied by Historical and Descriptive Notices by Dawson Turner, Esq., F.R. and A.S., London 1822. Dawson Turner's text stresses 'The extraordinary sanctity of its [Mont Saint Michel's] monastery, the striking peculiarities of its form and situation, and the importance acquired by the many seiges it supported, as the almost endless pilgrimages it received ...' Cotman also did an etching of the Knights Hall at Mont Saint Michel