When Vincent lived in London, he walked from his boarding house to his workplace each morning and evening, and the route took him across Westminster Bridge. He therefore knew the bridge and the nearby Westminster Abbey and Houses of Parliament well. With a sense of poetry, he wrote to his brother Theo that he knew how the bridge looked with the sun setting behind it, in the snow, in the mist and in the morning dew. In Paris in 1875, Vincent saw a painting by Giuseppe de Nittis (1846–1884) depicting the bridge and the abbey and realised how much he loved London. At the top edge of the letterhead of his employer, Goupil & Cie, Vincent made a sketch from De Nittis’s work.