A bodycolour of a view in Windsor Home Park, showing Windsor Castle in the background centre. In the foreground groups of figures and deer move around under large trees. Formerly in the Holker Estates.

Paul Sandby was trained by his elder brother Thomas in Nottingham, after which both worked as military draughtsmen to the Board of Ordnance at the Tower of London. In 1747 Paul was assigned to the Military Survey in Scotland, mapping the Highlands in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rebellion. He retained an interest in military subjects all his life, but landscape watercolours and gouaches (and some oils) soon became his principal activity. In 1746 Thomas's patron William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (George III's uncle), was appointed Ranger of Windsor Great Park and in 1764 Thomas became Deputy Ranger of the Park. Thereafter both Thomas and Paul spent much time at Windsor, producing many views of the castle and its surroundings over a period of fifty years.

The present gouache is of the south and east fronts of the castle on a summer's afternoon. In the foreground is the public footpath which until 1823 crossed the Little (now Home) Park from the King's Gate at the south side of the castle to Datchet bridge. By the trees are fallow deer, a common sight by the castle until 1785 when George III transferred all the deer to the Great Park, so that the Little Park could be put to better agricultural use. On the far right is the wooden summerhouse seen in RCIN 914575. The old woman with a basket appears in RCIN 914534, and the woman in a bonnet with two children in RCIN 921238.

The Royal Collection now holds approaching 500 works by the Sandby brothers, of which over 150 are views of Windsor or projects for work in the Windsor parks. Strangely, none of these seems to have been acquired by George III. The foundations of the collection were instead laid by the future George IV, who bought many works by the Sandbys through the dealers Colnaghi after the posthumous sales of the brothers' possessions, Thomas's in July 1799 and Paul's in May 1811. Sporadic acquisitions were made throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most notably at the sale of Sir Joseph Banks's collection in 1876. This is one of fifty Sandbys acquired during the reign of HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Catalogue entry from Royal Treasures, A Golden Jubilee Celebration, London 2002