This view is one of a large group of watercolours of Windsor Castle and its surroundings by Paul Sandby. A glimpse of the town is seen through the lofty arches of the gateway. The notice on the base of the right-hand tower shows it to be the debtors’ prison.

Image courtesy of the Courtauld

https://gallerycollections.courtauld.ac.uk/object-d-1967-ws-85?fbclid=IwY2xjawSjf5FleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFGTmw4eFFwRzB2eXJhVjM1c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHln8U0x9qAAX5Adbqt2GXWFMpXgTC9el64cvIM12_szC8t2CTjoOfUE61IYN_aem_KuENVLxeIkTAAMpB4sx8iA

Satire on popular support for John Wilkes and his ally Frederick Bull at the time of the 1771 election of City of London sheriffs. Ballad sellers stand in front of the Fleet prison: in the centre, a young woman wearing a head scarf, cloak and a neckerchief held at her breast by a cockade and badge lettered, 'Squire Wilkes again and again', her left hand on hip, holds up 'An irregular Ode to Wilkes & Liberty; to the left, a woman in a straw hat presses 'Wilkes & Bull' on an unwilling Scotsman; behind the first woman, another accompanied by a man wearing a cap, sells 'Parson Horne & the Devil' to prisoners reaching out through a barred window above which is a sign reading 'Pray remember the poor confind Debtors in the Fleet Prison'; the prison doorway bears a label advertising, 'A ginteel Lodgen too Let'. In the foreground, from left to right: a boy writes 'Magna Karta'; another chalks '45' on the back of a lawyer who is buying a ballad from the woman in the centre; a small girl pins 'Wilkes & Bull' to the bodice of her doll'; a porter, who is reading the 'Wilkes, Liberty & Bull' ballad, carries on his head a turtle with a label lettered, 'For Alderman Wilkes'. 1771

Source: The British Museum

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1872-1012-4775

Located about eight miles southwest of Edinburgh, Roslin Castle was built in the fourteenth century; it was damaged to a great extent after being besieged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its ruins, on a cliff overlooking the North Esk River, were celebrated by poets and immortalized by artists. The “beautifully wild and awfully sublime” vista also attracted numerous visitors (White, 1977, no. 40). Despite its title, Sandby’s composition is more likely a reflection of his contemporaries’ longing for such views rather than an attempt to render the castle accurately. A new cultural practice seems to be unfolding here: the taste for picturesque touring, a broadened social experience inherited from the once-dominating and exclusive practice of the Italian Grand Tour. This cultural phenomenon is personified by the figures appearing on the right in Sandby’s work. A drawing entitled “Lady Frances Scott and Lady Elliott”—dated 1780—in the Paul Mellon Collection (YCBA) reveals the identity of two of these women. Lady Scott, an amateur artist of some repute (she was known to Horace Walpole), can be seen sketching a view with the help of a camera obscura. The design of this optical device was of disarming simplicity: after entering through a small opening in front of the box, light would hit a mirror placed at an angle, projecting the image onto a glass surface on which was laid a sheet, allowing its user to draw the outlines. Known since antiquity and used by many artists (Sandby included), the camera obscura was extremely popular with amateur artists and travelers anxious to keep visual journals of their quests for local color in the countryside.

Source: Yale Center of British Art https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:13045

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Sandby_-_Roslin_Castle,_Midlothian_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg