Turner first visited Llanthony in 1792. Some forty years later he looked back on his early sketches and worked them up again for his great painting of Llanthony Abbey now in the Indianapolis Museum.
Ruskin writes of this picture;"He set all his gained strength and new knowledge at work on the well-remembered shower of rain that had fallen thirty years before,to do it better. The shower is here half exhausted, half passed by, the last drops are rattling faintly through the hazel boughs, the white torrent swelled by the sudden storm flings up its hasty jets to meet the returning light" Ruskin had the original on his dining room wall at Denmark Hill. Turner personally supervised the process of creating this etching.