On John Boydell’s engraving of A View taken near Limehouse Bridge, looking down the Thames (1751)

We know this view. It is familiar, and its unchanging parts have become anchors for our mind’s home. The river flows. The sky stretches over. The shingle and sand scrape along the foreshore. These have been so before us, over the centuries – millennia even – and will persist beyond our days.

How many times have we seen such skies over us in this place? The light wind prevails from the southwest (clue: the ship’s pennants), across the river’s curve from Pageant Stairs, billowing and sweeping the clouds over the north bank’s rooftops. From the shadows and lightness of the sky above the larger ship to the right, we notice the sun is shining from the southeast. The angles of drawn rays and cast shadows tell us it is around mid-morning. Light clothing on the people, smokeless chimneys and washing put out to dry on the terraces points to a summer’s day. Smoke swirls upwards from a couple of doors up from where The Grapes pub is now. The kitchen’s fire has been lit. The cook of the house is hard at work.

Aquatint versions exist of this engraving, but the skies in those depictions are pastel coloured, prettiness spread over the quaintness of the washed walls below. This colouring in must have been some years later. Memory changes perception, although it’s likely the colourists were others who were not present when this particular scene was sketched.

Perhaps there is such accuracy in this work because John Boydell was the son ...