According to the inscription, this boldly theatrical view of a waterfall was not made from life, but from a ‘blot’. Harriet Lister and her future husband, Amos Green, were interested in the theories of the artist Alexander Cozens, who devised a method for creating landscape drawings that was intended to liberate the imagination. This involved using a random ink blot on a sheet of paper to stimulate the artist’s mind to picture mountains, rivers, trees and other elements of a landscape, thus inspiring a purely imaginary composition.

Lister and Green collaborated on this watercolour the year before they married, signed with their combined initials, ‘A + HG’. As Lister’s mother strongly opposed the match, the partly obscured signature may be a secret declaration of their union.