During the First World War, John Everett was at first unable to sketch outdoors due to wartime security regulations, but in the spring of 1918, the Ministry of Information asked him to depict London river scenes. Everett received a permit to draw, and that summer, spent every day at the docks.
What attracted him most were the ships covered in ‘dazzle painting’. Dazzle was a type of camouflage developed by the artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917, in response to the heavy losses sustained by British merchant ships to German U-boat submarines. Everett’s dazzle pictures are among his most daring works for their sense of composition and modernity. They were first displayed at the Goupil Gallery in London in November 1918.

In this loosely painted view, Everett is experimenting with colour, composition and the reflection of the ships on the water. The uneven edges of this work show that for his sketches Everett used whatever paper he could find, possibly scrap paper in this case. As elsewhere, he left some of the sheet uncovered with the colour of the paper standing in for the translucent waters in the foreground.