The River Trent, with men rowing in boats

Dawson painted the River Trent many times throughout his career. His ability to modulate tone, even within the most intricate areas of brushwork, is shown to good effect in this exemplary version. He shows himself expert at replicating the natural light; the sallow and muted river tones and the subtly varied foliage against the cold bright sky. Alfred Dawson commented on how "...it was quite impossible to find a crudity in his skies,...or any divergence from what the mind feels to be right. In his deepest storm never black, in his highest light always pearly and full of glow". This scene also shows Dawson's debt to Dutch landscape painters. The artist had encountered the Dutch landscape school whilst still at Nottingham and seen examples of works by Ruysdael and Hobbema in the collection of Frederick Carter Cooper.