Farington was an influential figure in the London art world, and a pupil of the landscape painter Richard Wilson. But his drawings, reproduced in aquatint and other media, tended to maintain the topographical tendency of earlier artists.

A Cumbrian, Farington lived at Kenswick between 1775 and 1781, and his first London exhibits were of Lakeland subjects. This view of Cockermouth Castle, dominating the town on the river Derwent where the poet Wordsworth was born, was drawn in 1786. Another was engraved in 1816 for a later topographical series Britannia Depicta.