View of Green Park from Piccadilly, London, with the Queen's Basin, Spencer House, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham House with figures promenading in the foreground and beyond

This view of Green Park is taken from the north side of the park from Piccadilly. On the left side of the composition, figures are shown on Queen's Walk - named after George II's wife, Queen Caroline - leading down to the Mall. The Walk is flanked on the east side by the houses of Arlington Street and the recently built Spencer House. Commissioned in 1756 by John Spencer, 1st Lord Spencer, the facades of Spencer House were executed to designs by John Vardy, a pupil of William Kent, before he was replaced by James 'Athenian' Stuart. Stuart's interiors at Spencer House became one of the first examples in London of the Neoclassical style that would sweep the country. Beyond Spencer House stands Westminster Abbey with Hawksmoor's celebrated towers, built between 1734-40. The towers of the church of St. John's, Smith Square, completed by Hawksmoor’s contemporary John Archer in 1728, are visible above the trees on the Mall. The figures in the foreground are shown conversing beside the fashionable Queen's Basin, the reservoir filled with water from the Thames, pumped from the Embankment by the Chelsea Water Company.