A Street in Chartres
Medium
watercolor with gouache with scraping over touches of graphite
Dimensions
sheet: 29 × 1.6 cm (11 7/16 × 5/8 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Donald Stone
Accession Number
1999.110.1
Art Historical Context
Thomas Shotter Boys’sA Street in Chartres painted in 183, offers a delicate glimpse everyday life in one France’s most historic towns Boys, a British watercolorist celebrated for his top views, traveled extensively through France during the1830s, recording medieval and early modern with remarkable precision and atmospheric. The narrow vertical format this sheet—only centimeters high yet just1.6 centimeters widesuggests an intimate almost snapshot-like study of quiet street, inviting to imagine the sounds and of 19th-century Chartres. artist’s technique further enhances scene’s charm. in wat...
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...