File:Greenwich from the Point RMG PY3258.tiff

A view north and a little east over Greenwich from Blackheath Point - still a notable local viewpoint - in a landscape octagonal format. St Alfege, the parish church, is seen through trees on the left, Greenwich Hospital and the Thames beyond the town in the centre distance. An elegant but rather miniature and compact figure group stands in the left foreground on the lower slope of the Point, with a drum-like brick structure beyond (possibly a conduit head) just to the right of a house at what is probably the junction of Maidenstone Hill (leading left) with Point Hill. Four horses are pulling a cart up Point Hill, with four other figures standing beside this at the edge of the road. A block of buildings above the cart, seen against the trees of Greenwich Park, are probably the backs of houses on Croom's Hill.

Heriot, a Scot (1759-1839), was not only a fine watercolourist, travel writer and poet, but also the somewhat controversial deputy postmaster-general of British North America, 1800-16, before returning to England. The standard study of him, illustrated (b&w) and with a checklist of his works, is Gerald Finley's 'George Heriot, Postmaster-Painter of the Canadas' (Univ. of Toronto Press, 1983). This drawing is Finley 272 (p. 267) and is a late copy of a more panoramic watercolour of the same scene, dating to about 1785 (Finley 7, p. 232). Both are illustrated there as fig. 85 and fig. 6 respectively and this example is singled out (pp. 173-4) as a particularly interesting copy work, incorporating elements of both Heriot's early and mature style.

It was one of three on a single album page of family provenance (the others being views at and near Lyon, France) which was sold in the Mackonochie sale at Sotheby's, 21 July 1943 (see Finley p. 259, nos. 200 and 202). NMM bought it from Colnaghi's in 1956 (PR56/61). It is inscribed on the back, 'J. & A. H. Mackonochie' and Finley gives the measurements as 309 x 415 mm.