This bold watercolour is one of a small group of freely painted open air studies that Runciman made of the rich agricultural land of East Lothian, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. He quickly jotted down the soft yellows and browns of the fields receding towards the Lammermuir Hills in the distance. Runciman first learned to depict landscapes during his apprenticeship with the artist Robert Norie, who painted imaginative and idealised views that were largely used for decoration. Landscape drawing and painting was not part of the traditional academic training in Scotland, and until the early nineteenth century, it was as decorative painters that most Scottish artists learned to depict the landscape and to use colour.