One of two little landscapes painted on Havana cigar-box lids, and for now the only one offered. The lid is the cheap seasoned panel that earns a real place in art history: in Melbourne in 1889 boards like these gave the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition its name, when Roberts, Streeton and Conder painted small plein-air impressions on cigar-box lids and made a landmark of Australian art. This little landscape belongs to that same improvising habit.

The scene is a calm river: a punt carrying figures along the near bank, cattle come down to drink on the far side, a few leaning trees and blue hills behind, painted in the Dutch and Barbizon manner that travelled the world on small panels like this. The reverse still carries the Havana cigar stamp, the packaging it began as. There is no signature on the front, so the artist stays unknown. It comes on the oak stand bought to hold it, so it can be stood and seen as a picture rather than handled as a curio.