An English Frigate and Other Shipping in the Solent off Calshot Castle

This watercolor captures the light of a breezy day, with its patches of sunshine and seagulls wheeling overhead. The freshness of the representation belies its geopolitical significance: the round tower built by Henry VIII at the opening of the River Solent, farther along the south coast, had been in nearly constant use as a defensive structure since the sixteenth century, and, as the smoke from its chimney and the activity around it suggest, was in use into the later eighteenth century.