A masterpiece of the painter's English period, the work was executed as a crucial test in demonstrating the acclaimed skills of a watercolorist on canvas and in oil, notoriously a less free medium than the watercolour technique.
The result is a large oil, created in conjunction with the small panel commissioned by the Bernasconis (Broad Sanctuary, Westminster, oil on panel 27.5 x 20 cm., private collection. Cfr. La raccolta Bernasconi, dipinti del secondo Ottocento italiano, Bellinzona, 1998, p. 146).
Moreover, the subject is also remembered by the well-known De Gubernatis repertoire, listed as a key work among those on display at the Milanese national exhibition: "In 1886, in Milan, Hyde Park; Westminster Abbey; Oxford street; Westminster; On the Mersey Trafalgar Square" , Florence 1889, p. 443).
Clearly it was one of Paolo Sala's exhibition flagships, so much so that it was presented at the 1902 Permanente, also in Milan.
"But perhaps the greatest success of his career as a painter was to be achieved by Paolo Sala in England [...] The melancholic fog of the English landscape and the most characteristic visions of London are also shrouded in a tremulous and uncertain light in the frigid dawns and sunsets..." words by Guido Marangoni, which seem to be built on paintings like this one (Mostra del compianto pittore Paolo Sala, Milan, 1931, p. 19).
The sloping planes with purple glazes, the swarming of a Dickensian life, clearly demonstrate a peak moment in Sala's career, where the painter passes with ease from oil to watercolour and vice versa.