Jan Hendrik Verheyen is a typical representative of Dutch Romanticism, the popular national style of the first half of the 19th century. He painted portraits of his family and friends, small genre pieces and landscapes, although he only gained any degree of renown as an architectural painter. The 17th-century architectural painters Jan van der Heyden and both Job and Gerrit Berckheyde served as his greatest examples. The View of the choir and tower of Utrecht Cathedral is one of his most beautiful townscape paintings.

In the middle of the square, a man with a broom and a wheelbarrow surveys the mess he must clear up. Nearby, two women are selling fruit and flowers. Next to them, a beggar asks for money from a fashionably dressed man and woman. All this takes place against the backdrop of the somewhat rundown cathedral, which had been poorly maintained for years due to lack of finances.