Canaletto worked in England from 1746 to late 1755, except for an eight-month return to Venice from late 1750 to August 1751, and this view was probably painted about 1752, perhaps to mark the Hospital's completion in the previous year. He painted two other views of it, one now lost. The other - on loan to Tate Britain from a private collection - is closely based on a print published in Paris by Jacques Rigaud in 1736, of which the Museum has what appears to be Rigaud's original drawing (PAH8381). The Tate version is certainly the earlier one, probably painted before Canaletto saw Greenwich himself and possibly even in Italy. It has many of the same fanciful details of Rigaud's printed version and the same high, perspectivist's viewpoint, well above river-bank level and typical of many prints made before the Hospital was completed. The present version takes a more realistic low viewpoint and although still not literally accurate, is much more so, arguing some better, later knowledge of the site, which Canaletto would have visited from 1746 on; given its artistic celebrity after Thornhill had completed the ceiling of the Hospital's Painted Hall in 1712, it is inconceivable that he did not.