Thomas Shotter Boys

[1] When his apprenticeship came to an end he went to Paris where he met and came under the influence of Richard Parkes Bonington, who persuaded him to abandon engraving for painting.

Paying another visit to Paris, he remained there until 1837, and then returned to England in order to lithograph the works of David Roberts and Clarkson Stanfield.

[1] His most important work, Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen, etc., a collection of colour lithographs,[3] appeared in 1839, attracting a great deal of admiration.

[1] Drawn on the stone by Boys and printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, it was described in a review in the Polytechnic Journal as "the first successful effort in chroma-lithography [sic] hitherto brought to perfection".

He drew the illustrations to Blackie's History of England, and etched some plates for John Ruskin's Stones of Venice.