Boyce qualified as an architect before becoming an artist after meeting watercolourist David Cox (1783-1859) and began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1853. He spent the winter of 1861-62 in Egypt, sharing a house on the western bank of the river Nile with Swedish artist Egron Sillif Lundgren (1815-1875) and topographical painter Frank Dillon (1823-1909). Predominantly working in watercolour, Boyce was drawn to temples, ruins and scenes along the Nile. In this work he sensitively captures the Citadel of Saladin and Mamluk Aqueduct in a beautiful pink light at dusk. Boyce worked on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and was a close friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).