The subject of this watercolour is derived from the poem The Curfew. In the poem, a lonely man hears the curfew ringing across the water. Varley worked primarily in watercolour. He strove to make his watercolours as large, and as aspiring in content, as paintings in oil. The particular beauty of watercolours, according to him, lay in the panoramic rendering of the ‘clear skies, distances and water’.