A study of the Royal Naval College from the north-west, apparently from an upper window in the old Ship Hotel (destroyed in WWII) which stood by Greenwich Pier at the north end of the present Cutty Sark dry-dock. On the left are the chimneys of Greenwich Power Station (built c. 1906-10) with the College domes, right. The Admiral President's flag flies over his residence in the north pavilions of the King Charles Court. The College grounds, now Monument Gardens, in the immediate foreground contain the obelisk commemorating naval casualties of the Maori Wars in New Zealand (1870s). Outside the railings on the public river-walk (middle right) is the obelisk (1854) commemorating Lt. Joseph-Rene Bellot of the French navy, who drowned while carrying despatches for Sir Edward Belcher's Franklin search expedition in 1853. As the bare trees show, this is apparently one of the sketches Wyllie made in January 1924 when he came to Greenwich to do studies for a large oil painting of an aerial view over the Park towards London, exhibited at the Royal Academy that year, and which - according to the appendix of works in his wife's memoir of him ('We Were One, 1935) - he presented to the Borough. The 'Greenwich Mercury' of 11 January 1924 reported that 'Mr W.L. Wyllie, England’s most famous painter of marine pictures, is staying at the Ship Hotel, where he is preparing the preliminary designs for a large picture which he is to paint, and which is intended for hanging in the corridor of the Greenwich Town Hall.' (The building in question would have been what is now West Greenwich House and perhaps, from 1929, the modernist new town hall slightly further east on Greenwich High Road, the latter called Meridian House since Woolwich Town Hall became the administrative centre of the Borough under 1960s local-government reorganization.) That picture remains in the Borough collection and Wyllie also published an etched version of the same view (see PAF0715). The boxed number '[106] unpriced' note on this drawing indicates it is from Wyllie's studio collection, purchased by Sir James Caird for the Museum soon after his death in 1931.