Jean-Baptiste de Roy (1759-1839) was known for his landscape and animal paintings. He also practised etching. He was trained at the Brussels academy, and during a trip to Holland was able to study the works of great masters such as Vermeer and Rembrandt. From 1830-38 he travelled to Italy, France and England.

A label on the back of this painting states that it a 'view taken from life eight days after the battle of the 18th June 1815 of the farm and other buildings called "La Belle Alliance"'. La Belle Alliance (actually an Inn near Brussels) was Napoleon Bonaparte's command post during the Battle of Waterloo and it was here, after the French defeat, that Wellington met his fellow victor, General Blucher, commander of the Prussian forces, who wished that the battle itself might be approriately named 'La Belle Alliance' after this place and this auspicious comradeship in arms. 

The description states that the columns of livestock are there to feed the allied army, still engaged in the pursuit of the French. There is also a poignancy in a bucolic scene where once was carnage, with the shot-up inn and a suggestion of captive soldiers in the long line of cattle. A painting by De Roy entitled 'Cattle on their way to market', dated 1816, was sold at Christies in 1986. Compostionally very similar to RCIN 406566, it features La Belle Alliance from the same viewpoint, with variations in the dispersal of cattle and foreground details.