George III was given lessons in perspectival drawing when Prince of Wales, and continued to draw throughout his life. He used a ruler to produce the classical temple in the foreground here, carefully copying it from an engraving of the Temple of Baal Shamin in Robert Wood’s recently published Ruins of Palmyra.  The young prince was freer to use his imagination when drawing the background, choosing to set the temple in a quintessentially English river landscape.