Painted as a companion to ‘The Seat of William Moffatt, Esq., at Mortlake. Early (Summer's) Morning', exhibited at the Royal Academy the previous year, in which the house itself is seen from the west with the river on the left (Frick Collection, New York). There are sketches at Mr Moffatt's house, including the views seen in both paintings, in the 'Mortlake and Pulborough' sketchbook (T.B.CCXIII-10v to 14, 15v and 16v (that for this picture), 43 to 45; see No.301).

The dog on the parapet was an afterthought, perhaps not even Turner's. Tom Taylor adduced this dog as a proof of Turner's reckless readiness of resource when an effect in art was wanted. It suddenly struck the artist that a dark object here would throw back the distance and increase the aerial effect. Turner instantly cut a dog out of black paper and stuck him on the wall, where he still remains' (Thornbury 1862, I, p.305). But Frederick Goodall, R.A., whose father had engraved some of Turner's pictures, claimed that it was the work of Edwin Landseer, who would have been twenty-five years old at the time: He cut out a little dog in paper, painted it black, and on Varnishing Day, stuck it upon the terrace . . . All wondered what Turner would say and do when he came up from luncheon table at noon. He went up to the picture quite unconcernedly, never said a word, adjusted the little dog perfectly, and then varnished the paper and began painting it. And there it is to the present day' (William T. Whitley, Art in England 1821-1837, 1930, P. 282).

In these two pictures Turner returned to the study of differing lights at differing times of day of the Tabley pictures of 1809 (Nos. 150 and 151) but much of the press, particularly in 1827, was critical, especially of the painting's yellowness. According to The Morning Post for 15 June 1827 'Turner's View of Mortlake Terrace is desperately afflicted with the disease of yellow fever', while John Bull for 27 May likened Turner to a cook afflicted with a mania for curry: ‘That the Lord Mayor's barge, which is introduced only for the sake of the colour, should look yellow in its gingerbread decorations, is natural, and that the Aldermen's wives and daughters should look yellow, from sea-sickness, is also natural - but that the trees should look yellow, that the Moffatt family themselves, and all their friends and connexions, birds, dogs, grass-plots, and white stone copings of red brick walls, should be afflicted with the jaundice, is too much to be endured.' For The Literary Magnet however the picture was ‘instinct with the brightness of Claude'