Herbert Dalziel was the youngest member of the Dalziel family engraving firm, Dalziel Brothers. Beset by illness, he did not paint many pictures. He studied in Paris, and would have known Whistler through the family firm. In what Kenneth McConkey has described as 'an extraordinary departure', after 1892 he 'abandoned his conservative style and produced a number of jewel-like landscapes which adopt a sophisticated divisionism.... the sense of atmosphere and weird luminosity draws comparisons with contemporary photography and the mystic landscapes of Knopff.' (Catalogue to Impressionism in Britain, Yale, 1995, no 49).