More regularly a watercolourist, Brewtnall exhibited two paintings at the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil in the winter of 1889/90, one of which was ours and was picked out by the Northwich Guardian: ‘Here is all the brilliance and fire of a stormy sunset. The sun has already descended below the horizon, but has left his fire-glow and iridescence on the line of the horizon and on the clouds immediately above, the result being skilfully heightened by the dark landscape in the distance and by the half-lighted fields in the foreground. The picture is a subtle study of nature in one of her least frequent moods, and is, like its companion, naturally one to attract the careful and minutely observing connoisseur.’ The lone tree in the foreground was a device which Brewtnall had used elsewhere, to add a sense of distance and wintry drama to the stormy composition. An unidentified castle is in the distance, possibly near Warrington from whence Brewtnall came. In March 1890, Brewtnall wrote and illustrated an article for The Magazine of Art entitled ‘Winter in the Country’, in which he wrote of the ‘perception of all the beauties that winter alone can reveal or exhibit’, and went on to describe a light, portable painter’s hut to protect the artist from the wind and the rain, ‘that is very simply constructed of a few poles and hurdles. It is exactly the same as the huts the brick-makers use; and when you have discovered what the requirements of the particular case are, you can close up one side or open another with very little trouble.’