A street in Rouen, the Church of St Ouen beyond

Boys exhibited three different versions of this subject: two at the New Watercolour Society in 1840 and 1867, and one at the Royal Academy in 1847. He first explored the composition in a soft-ground etching, which was one of a series of five executed in or around 1833 (see J. Roundell, Thomas Shotter Boys, London, 1974, pp. 110-1, pl. 39.). One of the finished watercolours, with Spink in 1984 and dated 1840, depicts the building to the left as having either been re-clad in stone, or entirely rebuilt in a neo-Classical manner, suggesting that the present watercolour was executed in the 1830s when the timbers of the building were still visible.

For a view by Boys of Braunshweig, Germany, see lot 176, and for a watercolour of Rouen by William Callow (1812-1908), a pupil of Boys, see lot 175.