Critical acknowledgment was also accorded Davis’ Paris lithograph Rue des Rats, when it was selected by John Sloan for inclusion in the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ fifth annual “Fifty Prints of the Year” exhibition. Considered an important indicator of modern printmaking, this exhibition, like the American Print Makers annuals, traveled to cities around the country, creating a national audience for contemporary prints. Jane Myers, Stuart Davis, Graphic Work and Related Paintings, 1986, p. 25

The date ink stamp on the reverse was the date the artist dropped off the print to The Downtown Gallery. In 1927, Davis joined Edith Halpert’s Downtown Gallery located at 113 West 13th Street - Greenwich Village's first commercial art gallery.

The use of 'china' paper, a thin, smooth paper imported from the orient - but often from India or Japan as well as from China - permits the printer to retain every subtlety of the drawing. In the printing process, the thin, china paper is placed against the stone and is then covered with a sheet of heavier paper, to which the thin paper is adhered as it passes through the press, hence the term chine collé. Clinton Adams, American Lithographers 1900-1960, The Artists and Their Printers, 1983, p. 74.