In 1914, Melbourne-born artist Charles H Lancaster moved to Brisbane to manage the stained-glass department of painters, decorators and glaziers RS Exton and Co., where William Bustard was subsequently appointed as chief designer. Brisbane’s ensuing building boom inspired both Lancaster and Bustard to make paintings of the dynamic civic projects around them, and they became committed members of the city’s flourishing artistic community. Lancaster served as a trustee of the Queensland National Art Gallery from 1939 until his death in 1959.

In 1937, Lancaster was awarded the Royal Queensland Art Society Jubilee Medal and showed this painting in the Society’s 49th annual exhibition that year. With its simplified blocks of colour and strong treatment of light and shade, the painting represented developing modernist tendencies among Brisbane-based artists. The artwork hung alongside other street scenes, such as Bustard’s Summer haze 1937, which attracted the interest of the art critic for Brisbane’s Telegraph.

Lancaster’s cityscape depicts the canopy of fig trees near the Eagle Street fountain, while the view across the river features St Mary’s Anglican Church, above Kangaroo Point. The decorative pediment of the second building on the right identifies it as the Royal Bank of Queensland, on the corner of Elizabeth and Creek streets.