In the spring of 1886, Nils Kreuger married Bertha von Essen and moved to an apartment in Bourg-la-Reine, which was, as the artist himself wrote in a letter, a two-hour brisk walk directly south from Paris's southern city gate. The apartment was located on Grand-Rue, which was the main highway between Paris and Orleans. In this pleasant and quiet environment, the couple lived for over a year, and Kreuger spent much time outdoors, painting the streets and horse-drawn carriages that passed by.

Regarding "Boulevard i Bourg-la-Reine," Kjell Boström writes in his book about the artist: "It must have been quite lonely around Christmas time in Bourg-la-Reine, even though Kreuger no longer took his evening walks entirely alone. Boulevard in Bourg-la-Reine, with the empty bench in the foreground and the sleepy glimmers of light from the house facade in the background, strongly recalls a similar motif that Kreuger painted at the end of the 1890s, and which would be repeated by Eugène Jansson. The three paintings represent links in the same series, with the Boulevard painting as the starting point for the development."