Boat on the River Thames

Almost everything by Ralli in Athens is Greek or Egyptian. Church interiors, women in village dress, corners of Cairo. This small panel is a boat on the Thames, and it sits oddly among them.

He knew that river. Before Paris and before painting, he was schooled in England and then put to work at the family trading house in London, and the London of those years ran the busiest port in the world, with sailing barges still working the tide through the middle of the city.

The gallery gives the picture no date at all. The panel is wood, 19 by 27 centimetres, small enough to hold in one hand, and it is catalogued as one item inside a numbered group of small pictures that came out of his studio.