Piper regularly visited Portland Bill in Weymouth between 1929 and 1981, becoming one of his favourite locations to depict. The present work was produced for the 1955 BBC film on the artist, where Piper draws the rocky and isolated coastal landscape in situ, later developing the work into an oil painting at his studio. This drawing was subsequently gifted to the film’s director John Read and his wife, Olga. During filming, Read describes Portland in detail, revealing characteristics of the landscape that Piper was undoubtedly drawn to: ‘The place has an abandoned air…a litter of isolated objects…scattered over the shore and landscape…stone piles like toy bricks…strange houses are strung out in a line, as in a child’s painting. They pick their way across a surface pitted with disused quarries, huts and heaps of rubble.’ Piper too, reflects on his practice, explaining his desire to rearrange the landscape in his drawings in order to ‘make an elaborate symbol of the place; not a view, but a history’.