(Updated, January 2016) A scene of the Thames at Greenwich viewed from a landing point on the Isle of Dogs. The bank running along the north shore, in the left foreground of the picture, is shown built-up. This was done to contain the Thames at high tide and prevent the flooding of what had formerly been marshes. These were drained so that cows could graze on pasture that remained below water level at high tide. The bank is shown as a place of leisure, and in the foreground, groups of fashionable people promenade. Several figures representing Greenwich pensioners rest on the path, while three wherrymen waiting for a fare play bones. Off-shore on the right are three fishermen in a peter-boat. On the right, a merchantman, probably a collier, sails downstream against the tide, and on the left, two more are 'tiding up' the river on the flood, hove-to across the current against the adverse wind. Further downstream more ships are either riding or butting the tide.

The painting shows the way the river was used at Greenwich in the late 18th century, particularly the demonstration of the importance of the tide. The four vessels on the left drift up the river with sufficient sail on to manoeuvre when they meet the vessel on the right. From the height of the water, and not least from the nonchalant attitude of the people in the foreground who seem to be there for a while, it is probably in the last minutes of the flood. The river and the buildings of Greenwich dominate, but the artist has chosen to emphasize the rural quality of the landscape, evoking a calm idyll, with fields in the foreground to the left, and the hills behind Greenwich in the background.

Other artists engraved Dodd's work but he did execute over 100 plates himself, mostly in aquatint, including views of the naval dockyards at Chatham, Woolwich, Deptford, Portsmouth and Plymouth (all 1789-90) and also of a naval ship-launch at the merchant yard at Blackwall (1789) in the same set. This Greenwich painting was for the first of another set of four seaport and Thames prints (see PAI7098) published in 1793, the others being of Limehouse, shipping off the Tower of London and a view of Dover. Since it is known that both the Blackwall and Woolwich views were also oils, the latter (private collection in 2014) being the same size as this one of Greenwich, they were probably all from similar-size oils. The present painting is signed and dated 1792 (though the 2 is unclear), and is beyond reasonable doubt the one Dodd exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1793. It is the only one for all ten of these prints that was.