FDA-D.111-2010

FDA-D.111-2010

drawing

Nôtre Dame and Ile de la Cité, Paris
Pilkington

assigned by cataloguer
collection

'Boys served a full apprenticeship under the engraver W.B. Cooke before moving to Paris in 1823. He became friendly with Bonington, and after his death in 1829 continued to work in the same vein, producing watercolour views of Paris, but also finding employment as a lithographer on Baron Taylor's monumental work of French topography, the Voyages (...] daps 1'Ancienne France. When it came to his views of Paris, it was not Bonington so much as Girtin who Boys took as his inspiration. In a letter of 1833, Boys wrote to an artist friend in London, `I am about a work on Paris and follow up Girtin for it has never been done but by him & his sketches are so correct there is not a line out'. This free and atmospheric sketch of the east end of Notre Dame seen from the Quai Saint Bernard is usually considered to date from c.1831, just before Boys' commitment to the Paris project. A larger, finished watercolour of the same view (Christie's, 8 July 1986, lot 155) has been dated c.1832. Both works take advantage of the clear vista of the apse of Notre Dame after the demolition of the archbishop's palace in 1831. The building is commemorated in the name of the low bridge, the Pont de l'Archeveche, completed in 1827. Among the views of Paris Boys published in his Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp & Rouen in 1839 is a similar view of the cathedral from a slightly nearer position with a new wall running along the far bank of the Seine. Like the large blocks of stone which in the finished watercolour fill the foreground area left blank in the sketch, this distinctly unpicturesque addition is a reminder that 1830s Paris was a city in a constant state of flux.'

[Source: Wilcox, T., 'A Genius for Watercolour: Watercolours from the Eton College Collection', Christie's, London, 2003, 6437, catalogue number 55]

Pi 31

height (actual size): 210mm
width (actual size): 336mm

Pencil and watercolour

Boys, Thomas Shotter, 1803 - 1874 (Artist)

c. 1831

Exhibited: Nottingham, University Art Gallery, Thomas Shotter Boys (1803-1874), Centenary Exhibition, 1974, catalogue number 23; 'A Genius for Watercolour', Christie’s, London, 6 to 24 January 2003, catalogue number 55

Pilkington, Alan, 1879 - 1973

• Christie's, A Genius for Watercolour; Watercolours from the Eton College Collection, exhibition catalogue, 2003 (No. 55, exhibition catalogue p. 64)