The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849 with a quote from Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton from his "King Arthur" published in 1848: "Behold how Alp on Alp shuts out the scene ... etc." Bulwer was an admirer of Martin and tried but failed to buy the work despite the offer of a reduction in the asking price. Martin himself wrote of it: " In endeavouring to illustrate the poetry, I have represented a lovely night I saw some twenty years ago which was so remarkable for the splendour of the heavenly bodies that, if I fail in doing justice to the poet, I trust that I shall please the astronomers, as I have taken every pains to make my picture astronomically correct"