Late in 1886, Hassam and his wife departed his native Boston for France, spending the next three years abroad. His work of this period reflected his burgeoning interest in French Impressionism; he increasingly used broken brushstrokes and a lighter palette. Rather than being labeled an American Impressionist, however, Hassam preferred to identify himself as a painter of "light and air." An early morning rosy sky illuminates this distant view of Canterbury Cathedral, one of several watercolors of the English city.