A Thames landscape seen from Keen Edge ferry, Shillingford, in Oxfordshire, looking upstream, with Dorchester Abbey visible in the distance on the right and Sinodun Hill (also known as Wittenham Clump) in the background. The River Thames is in the foreground and the artist has included examples of the types of boat that would have been familiar on it. There are three different Thames craft, two spritsail 'upstream' barges used for trading with London together with a flat lighter-barge of the downstyream type carrying hay. In the foreground is a fishing boat known as a Peter-boat which was a common sight on the River Thames and its estuary, its main characteristic being possession of a fish well in the centre, where the catch was kept alive until landed. Related fishing equipment is included on the boat and the shore beside it. The idealized setting evokes Dutch 17th-century landscape painting and the pronounced reflections reinforce an air of stillness and unreality.

The artist was the son of Dominic Serres and although he began his career as a landscape painter he followed the pattern set by his father. He travelled to Paris, Rome and Naples before he succeeded his father as Marine Painter to George III in 1793. He favoured painting sea-pieces in the European tradition and after becoming Marine Draughtsman to the Admiralty in 1800 made drawings of the coasts of France and Spain published in his book, 'The Little Sea Torch', in 1801. In 1805 he also published 'Liber Nauticus', a treatise on marine draughtsmanship containing engravings of his father's drawings. He was eventually ruined by the bizarre and extravagant behaviour of his wife, a self-deluding fantasist who styled herself 'Princess Olive of Cumberland'. He died in debtors' prison, after creating a set of large watercolours recording his experiences there. The painting is signed and dated on the stern of the hay barge, 'J T Serres pinxt 1823'.