(b London, 2 Jan. 1803; d London, 10 Oct. 1874). English watercolour painter and lithographer. From 1825 to 1837 he was based mainly in France, where he was a friend of Bonington, whose watercolours have sometimes been confused with those of Boys. He specialized in Continental urban scenes and in 1839 he published Picturesque Architecture in Paris, Ghent, Antwerp, Rouen, etc., a work that marked the transition from hand-tinted lithography to chromolithography. In 1842 he published Original Views of London as It Is, the plates of which constitute a fine topographical record of Regency London. In spite of the high quality of his work, Boys's career went into decline in the later 1840s (partly because of ill health) and he was often reduced to doing hackwork.