Donald Maxwell trained at the Slade and the Royal College before serving as an official Admiralty artist during the Great War. This work took him to Palestine, India and Europe, but, although he travelled widely, the 'wonderfulness of Kent was stamped upon my imagination when I was furthest away from England', he wrote in an illustrated paean of praise to Unknown Kent in 1922 (p 11). This picture, of Rochester from the Strood side of the Medway River, which he knew so well, perfectly catches the slivery light on the mud flats.