A Street in Abbeville

Roberts's Street in Abbeville from 1844 captures the medieval architecture of this Picardy town—particularly its flamboyant Gothic church of Saint-Vulfran—that Roberts visited repeatedly as part of his systematic documentation of French medieval architecture. Abbeville's remarkably preserved late Gothic buildings, with their elaborate carved stone facades and crooked medieval streets, provided subjects of unusual pictorial richness for architectural painters seeking the combination of medieval character and picturesque decay that defined their subject matter. Roberts brought to French Gothic subjects the same combination of topographical accuracy and atmospheric lighting that had distinguished his earlier cathedral interiors, and his Abbeville paintings circulated in engraved form to an audience hungry for images of European medieval heritage.

The street scene combines architectural precision with the animated life of the town, Roberts rendering both buildings and figures with characteristic attention.