A watercolour drawing by William Turner (1789-1862) - usually known as 'William Turner of Oxford' as inscribed on the lined mount in which it was probably acquired in 1941. The mount is also inscribed with the title 'The Observatory, Greenwich Park', but the viewpoint in fact appears to be from Croom's Hill just to the west of the Observatory (on Castle Hill). The domes of Greenwich Hospital are on the right and the Queen's House is largely hidden by trees in front of it. None of the pine trees in the foreground now survive in this area of the Park at least, and probably none of the type elsewhere (though some probably later cedars do). The image can be dated to after 1823 since the square tower at centre is that of George Basevi's church of St Mary, built in that year as a 'chapel of ease' for the Greenwich parish church of St Alfege, of which the upper spire is further left, at a time when that was too small for the local churchgoing population. A hundred years later St Mary's had become redundant with changing habits: it was demolished in 1935-36 when Samuel Nixon's granite statue of King William IV (1844), was moved to the site owing to road improvements in its original location at the junction of King William Street and the north approach to London Bridge. In 2011 the statue and church site were incorporated in the new Sterling Entrance to the NMM, though the infilled church burial vaults still lie below. In the distance the sun slowly sinks behind the City and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, its raking light catching the sails of crowded shipping on the Thames. Turner introduces a a human element of 'youth and age' into this celebrated and popular historic view towards London, with a mother and child in the right foreground and a wooden-legged Greenwich pensioner seated on the grass a little further down to the left. For an item of its age this watercolour is in very good condition, suggesting it has never been over-exposed to light