Porte Saint Denis, Paris

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 in Paris, Cox 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 another trip to France in 1832, although on this trip he concentrated on the Northern ports of Calais, Dieppe and Boulogne.

Dated 1831, this watercolour was worked up from sketches made during his 1829 visit and an unfinished sketch of this composition was sold in these Rooms, 20 November 2003, lot 89.