Biography for Thomas Shotter Boys

Employment

In 1817 Boys, was apprenticed to an engraver where he stayed to learn the art until 1823. He then went to Paris where he worked as an engraver, lithographer and watercolourist, and it was here that he met Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828). Boys admired his mastery of the rendering of architecture and, as here, many of his works have been confused with those of Bonington. After working and teaching for some years in Paris he returned to England in 1837, and became a leading exponent of chromolithography as well as painting in watercolours. As a painter of architecture he is almost without peer, but his career somewhat faded in later life, although now he is recognised as one of the most distinguished artists of the period.