View of Westminster Bridge, London, looking towards the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey, with Lambeth Palace on the left, barges and boats on the Thames in the foreground

Joli, the most widely travelled of the great view painters of the 18th Century, arrived in London from Venice by way of Dresden in 1743-4 and left for Madrid in 1749-50. Between 1744 and 1748 he is recorded as a painter of theatrical scenery, and possibly also assistant manager at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. He also executed a number of decorative schemes, notably that which survives in the hall of the Richmond home of the theatre's manager John James Heidegger (E. Croft-Murray, Decorative Painting in England 1537-1837, Feltham, 1970, II, p. 226 and pls. 35-6), and views of London and Richmond.