Procida is the smallest and least visited of the three islands in the bay. While not as spectacular as Capri or Ischia, it is unspoiled and easily reached by boat from either Naples or Pozzuoli. The multi-coloured houses resting on the tufa rock make the island’s architecture one of the most distinctive of the region. The view in this sketch is most probably taken from a house situated above the island’s small seventeenth-centruy harbour, the Marina di Sancio Cattolico, and overlooking the gulf of Pozzuoli. On the mainland in the distance is the Monte di Procida and Baia, in Roman times a fashionable bathing resort.

Although a number of Fearnley’s outdoor paintings are executed with a casual, sketch-like technique, the majority of his plein-air studies are in fact carefully planned. At first glance they appear to have been rapidly completed at one sitting, but close inspection of their balanced compositions and attention to detail shows that the artist spent at least a day – and often more – in front of the subject. In this sense Fearnley followed Dahl’s practice of painting en plein air, although he was less interested than his master in portraying atmospheric phenomena. In this sketch, Fearnley is mainly interested in the effects of the strong sunlight on the landscape: reflected in the sky and the blue sea, it glows on the white face of the distant mountain and casts shadows of differing intensities on the terrace in the foreground.