View of the Houses of Parliament and Government Offices, City of Toronto, U.C. [Upper Canada]

In 1834, shortly after the town of York was incorporated as the city of Toronto in the province of Upper Canada, architect Thomas Young made an overall view of the new city along the shore of Lake Ontario, in addition to three additional watercolors depicting the city's most important buildings. Young, who had emigrated from England to Canada in 1832, soon established himself in Toronto as an artist, teacher, architect, politician, civil engineer and surveyor. From 1834 to 1839, he taught drawing at Upper Canada College, and advertised for subscribers to purchase his print series of four views of Toronto. The lithographs based on Young's watercolors were among the earliest made by Nathaniel Currier in his New York City print shop, which issued its first lithographs in 1835, and would become the most prolific of American printmaking establishments in the nineteenth century. Currier's prints of early Canada immediately became popular and remained so for decades.

In this rare early view of Toronto, the artist featured the Houses of Parliament (graced by a portico) and other government buildings as a row of stately, two-story buildings in the neo-classical style. While pedestrians walk on the sidewalk in front of these buildings, across the road on a grassy field, four soldiers wearing red jackets march in formation towards them.