The Thames near Battersea

"After Robert's death a number of paintings of the Thames Embankment were found in his studio... They were influenced by Whistler's tiny paintings of the sea or the river landscape of the Thames - paintings of half-light, mist or twilight. He showed a number of them in an exhibition in London in 1884 which Roberts undoubtedly saw, for it inspired the whole conception of the 9 x 5 exhibition... (Roberts) painted... with crisp strokes of fluid paint using carefully prepared tones in a simple range of pinks, blues and mauves. For the first time he used saturated and thus luminous colours and so was able to capture the brightness of early morning whose light makes even shadows gleam. Whistler was to be important to Roberts in making him realise that paint was a substance with constructive properties of its own not just a means of imitating nature." (V Spate, Tom Roberts, Melbourne 1972, pp.29-30)