L’Assemblée Nationale with Les Invalides beyond, Paris, with a group around a street entertainer with his monkey in hat and red coat, holding a bow

In 1829 Cox undertook a six-week tour of Northern France, travelling from Calais to Paris via Amiens, Beauvais and Rouen. Despite spraining his ankle whilst in Paris, he managed to spend his days exploring the city, capturing the architecture, monuments, streets and inhabitants from ‘a fiacre, or cab’, making it stop when he came to a subject that inspired him. According to his biographer, Solly, he ‘painted away indefatigably for many weeks, seated in the cab or occasionally in a chair’ (N. Solly, A Memoir of the Life of David Cox, 1873, p. 64). This visit was so successful that he undertook a second trip to France in 1832, although on this trip he concentrated on the Northern ports of Calais, Dieppe and Boulogne.

Dated 1832, the year of this second visit, this watercolour must have been worked up from sketches made during his 1829 visit, as Cox did not go to Paris on his later trip. The strong handling of the watercolour medium and the lack of rapid pencil under-drawing suggests that this watercolour may have been intended for exhibition.

The present watercolour demonstrates the influence that Bonington and to a lesser extent, the young Boys (see lot 97 for a similar view by Boys) had on the artist, encouraging him to adopt a more fluid method of working, during the late 1820s and early 1830s. As a result, he reduced the amount of pencil under-drawing and instead worked up his subjects in wash, using a lighter, brighter palette.

Les Invalides was still a hospital for invalid soldiers when Cox was in Paris. Founded in 1670 by King Louis XIV, in 1840, it became the resting place of Napoleon, when he was exhumed from St. Helena and brought back to Paris and re-buried with great pomp, in the Eglise du Dôme, which can be seen in the background.