A river enters from the left and curves back through low, marshy ground toward a hazy horizon, where hills and moorland fade into mist. Sparse, windswept trees frame the scene on either side, and a single warm break in the clouds lights the sky near the horizon.

The dark, textured foreground bank gives way to progressively paler, softer forms, building deep atmospheric distance through value rather than line. Scumbled brushwork in the sky and mist contrasts with looser knife-and-brush strokes in the earth and grasses, in the manner of Romantic-era English landscape painting.