A prolific painter and exhibitor, Jenkins was Secretary of the Old Watercolour Society, and is supposed to have invented the idea of a 'Press View' before the public opening of an exhibition. The location of the scene, as indicated by the original title given in the 1850 exhibition catalogue, is Boulogne, on the coast of France. It was important for nineteenth-century painters to specialize, to carve out a niche with their own particular subject-matter, and Jenkins watercolours are mainly set on the French coast, often Brittany, and show fisherfolk at their work or resting on the shore. This specialization was indicative of the increasing commercialism and professionalism of the art world.