An etching of Kew Palace from the north side of the lake, with a large swan boat. Lettered in English and French, with the publication line 'Published by Robert Sayer in Fleet Street, Carington Bowles in St Paul's Churchyard and John Bowles in Cornhill'. The plate was first engraved by Elliott after William Woollett for William Chambers’s Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew, published in 1763 and dedicated to the Dowager Princess of Wales (mother of George III). The publication was ‘undertaken by Royal Command’ and funded ‘by Royal Bounty’. This is a later reissue of the print. 

The swan boat was made by John Rich for George III's seventeenth birthday in 1755, when he was still Prince of Wales. The Gentleman's Magazine described it in great detail, reporting: "[Wednesday 4 June 1755] [b]eing the birthday of his royal highness the Prince of Wales, a pleasure barge, built by John Rich Esq; was launched in the gardens at Kew, and named the Augusta. It is formed in a taste entirely new, and made to imitate a swan swimming; the imitation is so very natural as hardly to be distinguished from a real bird, except by the size of it. The neck and head rise to the height of 18 feet; the body forms a commodious cabin, neatly decorated and large enough to accommodate 10 persons; and the feet so artfully contrived as to supply the place of oars, which move it with any degree of velocity. The novelty of the design, and the elegance of the execution, afforded a particular pleasure to the royal family, who were present." (The Gentleman's Magazine, volume 25, 1755, p. 280). John Rich (1692-1761) was a theatre manager and actor, and the originator of English pantomime.