Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Touen, etc.

Art Historical Context

Thomas Shotter Boys’s *Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen, etc.* (1839) captures the charm of historic European streets through a series of color lithographs. Published as a portfolio rather than a single image, the work reflects the nineteenth-century fascination with travel and the romance of old buildings. Boys, an English artist trained in both watercolor and printmaking, used the relatively new medium of color lithography to bring vivid architectural views to a wider audience. The lithographic technique allowed delicate tones and subtle colors to be reproduced with ...

About the Artist

Thomas Shotter Boys · 1803–1874

Thomas Shotter Boys was born on 2 January 1803 in Pentonville, London, and received his first professional training as an apprentice to the engraver George Cooke. When his apprenticeship concluded he crossed the Channel to Paris, a move that would transform his artistic direction entirely. There he encountered Richard Parkes Bonington, the brilliant English watercolourist whose fresh, luminous ren...