A watercolour and bodycolour drawing of a landscape with an old beech tree on a river bank, beyond which are cottages and hills. A group of figures gathering faggots by the tree's base. Whatman watermark. Sheet removed from canvas.

The watercolour depicts either a tree in the parkland belonging to Sir Richard Burdett in Staffordshire, as described in relation to this drawing by William Sandby on 8th February 1892 (according to Oppé, 1947, no. 149), or alternatively shows the beech tree near Sandpit Gate, the Sandbys' first Windsor residence. Sandpit Gate later became the residence of a woodman and his family, and when it was cut down, the tree furnished Sandby with significant quantities of bistre for his ink (see J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, p. 113). Sandby's estate sales in 1811 and 1817 offer two possibilities for the work, as lot 92 or 93, estate sale 16-18 April 1817, first day (although there is no record of these entering the Royal Collection); or lot 71, estate sale 2-4 May 1811, third day (bought Colnaghi for George IV when Prince of Wales). Oppé was inclined towards the latter identification, although Sandpit Gate is not near the river or a water source.

The gathering of faggots was only permitted on common land, a land type that was shrinking in the eighteenth century as estate boundaries were formalised; Sandby therefore depicts figures increasingly on the margins of society. The date of the work is likely to be the later years of Sandby's career when he made several large watercolours in which the gnarled branches and trunks of trees dominate.