Sowerby belonged to a Gateshead family of glass manufacturers which produced several painters. He specialised in landscapes of a vaguely Pre-Raphaelite or symbolist kind, sometimes a little reminiscent of such French contemporaries as Le Sidaner or Osbert. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere, and is recorded living at Gateshead (until 1879), Colchester (where the present picture was apparently painted), Abingdon and Ross-on-Wye.

The title is a misquotation from Wordsworth's poem 'I wandered lonely as a Cloud."