A plate from Turner's 'Liber Studiorum', based on his oil of 'London' (Butlin & Joll, no. 97), which he exhibited at his own gallery at his house in Queen Anne Street in 1809 (the publication address here), sold in 1811 to his patron and friend Walter Fawkes but later retrieved by exchange and retained to his death. It is now in the Turner Bequest at Tate Britain.

In both images the viewpoint is from about two-thirds up the north-west side of One-Tree Hill on the east side of the Park, although the perspective is slightly adjusted, the spatial relationship between the Queen's House and Greenwich Hospital too close, and their verticals exaggerated for effect. It is nonetheless an inspiring view of the maritime and commercial city under a lowering, rainbowed sky, above the Park setting and deer in the foreground.

Both the oil and print are also important as the only major images which show the short-lived first-phase extension of the Queen's House (to house the Royal Naval Asylum), with Daniel Alexander's colonnades ending in balanced hammer-head wings. (Only the eastern one can be seen in both, still scaffolded, the roof somewhat distorted but slightly better shown in the oil.) These were begun in 1807 and on completion at about the time Turner painted the picture were quickly extended to the northward in their present form, to increase the capacity of the Asylum (later the Greenwich Royal Hospital School).

The 1809 painting's size of '3ft by 4ft' is inscribed in the lower left margin (not shown on this photo) and the letter 'A' for 'Architectural' centrally above the image, in accordance with Turner's 'Liber' practice of classifying his pictures by formal type ('Epic', 'Marine' 'Pastoral' etc). The plate signature, lower left reads 'J M W Turner RA PP' (for Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy). He etched the outline, Charles Turner did the mezzotinting.

Turner's original oil of this subject, of which the title was simply 'London', was exhibited in 1809 with the following verse interpretation of the view, probably of his own composition:

'Where burthen'd Thames reflects the crowded sail,
Commercial care and busy toil prevail,
Whose murky veil, aspiring to the skies
Obscures thy beauty, and thy form denies,
Save where thy spires pierce the doubtful air,
As gleams of hope amidst a world of care.'