Gillies said that he found a freedom in knowing a subject so well that he could take liberties with it. It is no surprise then that his most abstract landscapes come from some of his favourite places.
After seeing the international and modern 1934 SSA exhibition, he and the artist John Maxwell produced a series of at least six landscapes in the manner of Paul Klee, of which this is one. Gillies and Maxwell were close friends and regularly painted together in the 1930s and for at least ten years after 1945.