Returning from the Haunts of the Seafowl

This is one of Collins’s grandest paintings, intended to impress prospective patrons at the Royal Academy exhibition. It is in contrast to the works he normally painted which depicted village landscapes. With its serpentine design and panoramic sweep, the conception of the work is ostentatious. One fellow Academician commented that ‘Collins had attempted to push the illustrative capabilities of Art beyond what they would bear’.