British artist Robert Ponsonby Staples was a casual visitor to Australia with his father Sir Nathaniel Staples, sailing on the first voyage outwards of the SS Orient in November-December 1880. After a month in Sydney, the pair departed on SS Orient’s return voyage in January 1881. When the ship was moored off Adelaide in early February, R P Staples executed what Peter Walker describes as one of the first plein-air Impressionist works painted in Australia, Off Adelaide, 1880.