The Nicholsons lived at Harlech in North Wales towards the end of the First World War and later. This view is from high above Harlech Castle, which is itself on the edge of a hill, and looks across Tremadoc Bay to the mountains on the Lleyn Peninsula. It is seems to be by moonlight, after rain, with a reflection from a slate roof and a pattern of shadows cast by the walls around the fields.

Nicholson began to paint landscapes in these sudued colours in about 1909, when he moved to Rottingdean on the Sussex coast.