Lot Essay
In the spring of 1859, Whistler moved from Paris to London and settled in the docklands at Wapping. He began work on a series of etchings depicting Thames subjects, concentrating on riverfront scenes in the area below London Bridge, at Wapping and at Rotherhide. In the same way that Meryon had portrayed the vanishing 'quais' of the Seine, Whistler sketched, from rowboat and riverbank, a part of London soon to be lost. We see his continuing concern with working-class subjects, the immediacy of modern life, themes that he had been drawn to during his time in Paris. The aging waterside houses, delapidated warves, and local workers who feature so prominently in the foreground of many of the scenes, are all rendered with a precision of detail, showing them as he saw them in their naked truth.
Rotherhithe and The Limeburner, two of the most impressive plates from the series, were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860 and 1862. They were much admired, and compared by the critics to Rembrandt's etchings. In the Thames scenes, Whistler does indeed reveal himself to be the master of linear expression. The compositional and technical tensions that are set up between freedom of execution and precision of definition, sweeping lines and short etched marks, strong horizontal and vertical bands, depth and flatness of space, reveal a tightness of composition and strength of style, characteristic of the mature artist.
The Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects, later known as The Thames Set, were not at first issued as a set, in spite of showing a coherence of subject matter (apart from the inclusion of a portrait and a scene inside a French forge). In the early 1860s, impressions were pulled by Whistler and Auguste Delâtre, the celebrated French printer. They were sold at the Bond Street shop of Edmund Thomas, son of Sergeant Thomas who had arranged for the publication of Whistler's The French Set a couple of years earlier. It was not until 1871 that the etchings were formally published as a set by Messrs. Ellis & Green, of Covent Garden. They purchased the plates, had them steelfaced and printed an edition of about 100.
The set was just as enthusiastically received as when they had first appeared in the early 1860s as individual plates, 'all the more precious because of the beauties they perpetuate are dying out..... Whistler has immortalised Wapping, and has given it the grace that is beyond the reach of anything but art. Let all art lovers of good art and marvellous etching who want to know what Father Thames was like before he took to having his bed made, invest in Whistler's portfolio'. ('A Whistler for Whistler', Punch, or the London Charivari, 17 June 1871, p. 245, quoted in R. E. Fine, Drawing Near, Whistler Etchings from the Zelman Collection, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 20)
Rotherhithe and The Limeburner, two of the most impressive plates from the series, were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1860 and 1862. They were much admired, and compared by the critics to Rembrandt's etchings. In the Thames scenes, Whistler does indeed reveal himself to be the master of linear expression. The compositional and technical tensions that are set up between freedom of execution and precision of definition, sweeping lines and short etched marks, strong horizontal and vertical bands, depth and flatness of space, reveal a tightness of composition and strength of style, characteristic of the mature artist.
The Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects, later known as The Thames Set, were not at first issued as a set, in spite of showing a coherence of subject matter (apart from the inclusion of a portrait and a scene inside a French forge). In the early 1860s, impressions were pulled by Whistler and Auguste Delâtre, the celebrated French printer. They were sold at the Bond Street shop of Edmund Thomas, son of Sergeant Thomas who had arranged for the publication of Whistler's The French Set a couple of years earlier. It was not until 1871 that the etchings were formally published as a set by Messrs. Ellis & Green, of Covent Garden. They purchased the plates, had them steelfaced and printed an edition of about 100.
The set was just as enthusiastically received as when they had first appeared in the early 1860s as individual plates, 'all the more precious because of the beauties they perpetuate are dying out..... Whistler has immortalised Wapping, and has given it the grace that is beyond the reach of anything but art. Let all art lovers of good art and marvellous etching who want to know what Father Thames was like before he took to having his bed made, invest in Whistler's portfolio'. ('A Whistler for Whistler', Punch, or the London Charivari, 17 June 1871, p. 245, quoted in R. E. Fine, Drawing Near, Whistler Etchings from the Zelman Collection, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 20)