An American in London: Whistler and the Thames

An AmericAn in London

WhistLerAnd the thAmes

An A

merican in London: W

histler and the tham

esm

argaret F. macd

onald Patricia de montfort

in the 1860s and 1870s Whistler produced a body of work based on the thames. Pivotal to his career, this beautiful group of paintings, prints and drawings permits a detailed examination of his approach to composition, subject and technique. the earliest paintings, notably Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, produced soon after his arrival in London, mark one of his most profound and successful challenges to the art establishment of the time.

As well as allowing a detailed study of the evolution of an artist, these works show the thames under contrasting climatic conditions, from Chelsea in Ice to the lovely Nocturne: Grey and Gold – Westminster Bridge, which depicts the deep blue of warm summer evenings. they bring to life Victorian London: the workers and women who frequented the thames-side wharves and pubs, the shipping that thronged the Pool, the barges that navigated the perilous passage under the bridges, and the steamboats and ferries crowded with daytrippers.

the nocturnes of the 1870s mark an important breakthrough in Whistler’s art: his shift from French realism to sophisticated harmony, based on mood and atmosphere, but still rooted in a literal rendering of the thames waterside. the famous Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge is the culmination of his bridge paintings; here the influence of Japanese prints reached its fullest form.

this comprehensive and handsomely illustrated study presents the definitive examples of Whistler’s radical new aesthetic approach to the time-honoured subject of the city and river. in addition, the works reveal to us his world – the exhibitions, the personalities, the buildings, the style, and the atmosphere which inform his art and root this American cosmopolitan securely in the ranks of artists inspired by London and the thames.

Cover: Grey and Silver: Old Battersea Reach, 1863, oil on canvas, the Art institute of chicagoInside covers: James Wyld, Wyld’s New Plan of London, 1853, map on linen, University of Glasgow Library, special collections

Margaret F. MacDonald is Professor emerita and honorary Professorial research Fellow (history of Art) in the school of culture and creative Arts, University of Glasgow. she is Project director of a recently completed research project to produce an online catalogue raisonné of Whistler’s etchings.

Dr Patricia de Montfort is lecturer in history of Art at the University of Glasgow. her teaching and research interests include the life and work of James mcneill Whistler, nineteenth-century women artists and the nineteenth-century London art market.

Philip Wilson Publishersan imprint of i.B.tauris & co Ltd6 salem roadLondon W2 4BUwww.philip-wilson.co.uk 9 781781 300220

ISBN 978-1-78130-022-0

the smithsonian’s museums of as ian ar t

Whister_Soft-back_Cover New.indd 1 22/08/2013 15:18

AN AMERICAN IN LONDON

WHISTLERAND THE THAMES

Whistler_Final_V.15.indd 1 12/08/2013 21:24


Margaret F. MacDonaldPatricia de Montfort

the smithsonian’s museums of as ian ar t

AN AMERICAN IN LONDON

WHISTLERAND THE THAMES


Published on occasion of the exhibition An American in London: Whistler and the Thames Dulwich Picture Gallery, 16 October 2013 – 12 January 2014 Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, 1 February – 13 April 2014 Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 2 May – 17 August 2014

© Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2013

Published by Philip Wilson Publishers an imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd6 Salem RoadLondon W2 4BUwww.philip-wilson.co.uk

Distributed in the United States and Canadaexclusively by Palgrave Macmillan175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010

ISBN Hardback 978-1-78130-006-0ISBN Softcover 978-1-78130-022-0

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publishers.

The right of Margaret F. MacDonald and Patricia de Montfort to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by the authors in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Designed by Pippa Kate Bridle

Printed and bound in Spain by Grafo S.A.

SUPPORTERSADDISON GALLERY OF AMERICAN ART, PHILLIPS ACADEMYAn anonymous foundationEdward P. Bass (Phillips Academy Class of 1963) on his 50th reunion, in honor of Brian T. Allen (by The Bass Foundation)Michael Scharf (Phillips Academy Class of 1960) and Fiona ScharfAndrew Scharf (Phillips Academy Class of 2002)William Scharf (Phillips Academy Class of 2004)Thomas C. Foley (Phillips Academy Class of 1971) and Leslie Fahrenkopf FoleyLeslie G. Callahan III (Phillips Academy Class of 1968) and Barbara Keenan CallahanDavid Carter (Phillips Academy Class of 1941) and Louise Carter

DULWICH PICTURE GALLERYFriends of Dulwich Picture GalleryAmerican Friends of Dulwich Picture GalleryAmerican Art Supporters’ GroupMichael Marks Charitable TrustFarrow & Ball

This exhibition has been made possible for Dulwich Picture Gallery by the provision of insurance through the Government Indemnity Scheme. Dulwich Picture Gallery would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.

FREER GALLERY OF ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONThe Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts

Half title: taken from Thames Warehouses, 1859, etching and drypointColby College Museum of Art, The Lunder Collection, Maine (cat. 8)Frontispiece: Wapping, 1860–64, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (cat. 29, detail) Endpiece: taken from Whistler with a hat, 1859, etching and drypoint British Museum, London (cat. 2)


Contents

Directors’ Foreword

Curators’ Acknowledgements

Introduction: An American in London

Whistler and the Thames

Margaret F. MacDonald

‘Painting river pictures’: Whistler’s Chelsea subjects

Patricia de Montfort

Catalogue

Etching and Drypoint

The Thames set

The Oil Paintings: Whistler’s ‘Daylights’

Chelsea

Lithographs and Lithotints: from Limehouse to Old Battersea Bridge

Nocturnes

Old Battersea Bridge

Japonisme

Photographs

List of Works

Notes

Bibliography

Chronology

Chronology of Whistler’s Thames Subjects

Copyright and Photographic Credits

Index

6

7

9

13

31

51

53

57

81

99

113

125

133

147

153

168

177

182

184

186

188

189


Catalogue


The Oil Paintings:Whistler’s ‘Daylights’

The years between 1859, when Alexander Ionides first commissioned

Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge (cat. 25), and 1870 represent a

period of experimentation for Whistler but also one of uncertainty

and artistic self-doubt. On the one hand, he was writing excitedly

to his old friend in Paris, the dealer George Lucas:

‘The White Girl’ was refused at the Academy where they only

hung the Brittany Sea piece and the Thames Ice Sketch! both of

which they have stuck in as bad a place as possible – Nothing

daunted I am now exhibiting the White Child at another

exposition where she shows herself proudly to all London! that

is to all London who goes to see her! She looks grandly in her

frame and creates an excitement in the Artistic World here

which the Academy did not prevent, or forsee after turning it

out I mean.82

On the other, while Courbet’s method of applying thick layers of

impasto and treatment of subject matter had appealed to him in

works like The Coast of Brittany or Alone with the Tide (1861; Wadsworth

Athenaeum), Whistler became increasingly diverted by Japanese

Grey and Silver: Chelsea Wharf, 1864/68, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (cat. 36, detail)

art over the next few years, both in his etched work and in oils

like Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks (1863–64;

Philadelphia Museum of Art), with its blue and white porcelain

and other Oriental accessories, and in the Graeco-Japanese Battersea

Reach from Lindsey Houses (cat. 34).

Whistler’s letters to his friend Henri Fantin-Latour in Paris

reveal his often tortuous efforts to pursue his own artistic path.

‘I have also done two little pictures of the Thames – an old

bridge, and an effect of fog,’ he told him in January 1864, but,

he despaired, ‘I thought they were all right when I finished but

now I don’t care for them – Oh Fantin I know so little – things

do not go quickly! ’83 Indeed, according to Arthur Severn,84

he took many weeks over The Last of Old Westminster (cat. 26),

the wooden piles supporting the bridge and the appearance of

the workmen. However, views like Grey and Silver: Chelsea Wharf

(cat. 36) exhibit a freer handling of the paint and a lighter

palette, if much reworking – evidence of Whistler’s continuing

technical experiments. By the time that he was painting Variations

in Pink and Grey: Chelsea (cat. 38) in 1871–72, he was beginning

to evolve his liquid paint technique that enabled him to work

faster in thin layers of pigment.


An American in London: Whistler and the Thames

82

Cat. no. 25Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge, commissioned 1859, signed 1863, oil on canvas,

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts

This was Whistler’s first painting of Old Battersea Bridge. Commissioned by the Greek shipping merchant

Alexander C. Ionides after the Royal Academy exhibition of 1859, it was completed and exhibited at the R.A. in

1865. It was painted thickly in muted shades of grey, greyish blue and brown on a fine weave canvas over a self-

portrait of the artist. It shows the view down river from Lindsey Row, Chelsea, with the factories of Battersea

seen across the river and the Crystal Palace on the horizon. A critic wrote: ‘So true are the gradations, so correct

the relative tone fixed on for each object, so unaffected the arrangement of the boats, the bridge, and the shore,

that one seems to be looking back right into last November, through a little square in the Academy walls.’85


83


Cat. no. 26The Last of Old Westminster, 1862, oil on canvas,

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A. Shuman Collection

The new Westminster Bridge was built over the old bridge; it was operational in 1860 but work

continued into 1862. Whistler painted it over several weeks, from Walter Severn’s rooms in Manchester

Buildings (site of New Scotland Yard). Severn described Whistler at work: ‘He would look steadily

at a pile for some time, then mix up the colour, then holding his brush right at the end, with no

mahlstick, make a downward stroke and the pile was done.’ He added, ‘these piles looked all about the

same grey, and the shirts of the little figures working looked to me all the same white, but Whistler

spent much time getting various tones out of the heaps of colour on his large palette. After securing

the exact shade of grey or white which he wanted he did his pile or shirt with a few dexterous dabs.’86



84

Cat. no. 27Grey and Silver: Old Battersea Reach, 1863, oil on canvas

The Art Institute of Chicago

An impressionistic panorama of Battersea, to right of the view seen in Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge

(cat. 25). The factories are shown in considerable detail, painted in a limited range of greys, blue-greys and

browns, colours picked up in the boldly sketched sailing barges on the river, and boats on the foreshore, where

workmen – probably from the Greaves boatyard – beach their rowing boats. Although painted in 1863, it was

exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867 as ‘Battersea’, and renamed for Whistler’s retrospective exhibition of

Nocturnes, Marines & Chevalet Pieces at Goupil’s in 1892 – when most of his Thames pictures were reunited. At that

time it was sold for £450 to Mrs Potter Palmer and described by Whistler as ‘one of the most readily accepted’.87


85


Cat. no. 28Battersea Reach, ca 1863, oil on canvas

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

‘It was a view of the opposite bank of the river, from out of my window, on a brilliant autumn

evening, and the painting is a favourite of mine,’ said Whistler at the Whistler v. Ruskin trial.

He told a picture restorer that it was painted ‘as well as I remember, in one go and consequently

... not much impasted’. It is indeed painted thinly, except for the vigorous brushstrokes on

the boats in the foreground. Whistler described it later as ‘a most gorgeous bit of colour’.88



86

Cat. no. 29Wapping, 1860–64, oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Wapping was painted from a balcony over the Thames at The Angel, a pub at Cherry Gardens, Bermondsey. In

the same pub he etched Rotherhithe (cat. 12), with two sailors seated, smoking, on the balcony. The painting

was started in 1860, with the passing shipping carefully observed, and painted impressionistically in fresh,

bright colours. The figures were altered, repositioned, replaced and repainted several times both on site and

back in the Lindsey Row studio over several years. In particular, the figure of Whistler’s mistress, the red-

haired Irish model, Joanna Hiffernan, originally shown as a sailor’s ‘molly’ or prostitute, was repainted to

assume a darker, more modest and reflective persona before the painting went to the Royal Academy in 1865.


Chelsea

In March 1863 Whistler settled at 7 Lindsey Row, on the Thames

in Chelsea. Neighbours included Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the

poet Algernon Swinburne. In 1867 he moved down to 2 Lindsey

Row (96 Cheyne Walk) where he stayed for the next eleven years.

The Greaves brothers – Walter and Henry – lived a few doors up

at 9 and 10 Lindsey Row. They rowed Whistler about the river,

helped in the studio, and themselves worked on paintings of the

Thames. Literary editor and biographer of the Italian nationalist

Guiseppe Mazzini, Mme Emilie Venturi, also lived a few doors

along. A friend and patron, she acquired from the artist the vivid,

impressionistic oil painting Chelsea In Ice (cat. 35) and she greatly

admired his Ten O’Clock Lecture.99

He moved out in June 1878 to live briefly at the White House

in Tite Street, designed by E.W. Godwin as a studio and house.

The White House was lost, along with everything he owned –

art, collections, pots (Chinese and every-day) and pans – when

he went bankrupt less than a year later. However, except for

fourteen months in Venice 1879–80 and several years in Paris

in the 1890s, he lived close to the Thames in Chelsea for the rest

of his life. He died at 72 Cheyne Walk in 1903.

No. 2 Lindsey Row was a three-storey townhouse (plus attic),

with the kitchen and dining room on the ground floor, sitting

room and studio on the first floor. Across the road was the River

Thames, with Battersea Bridge to the left, the factories of Battersea

across the river, and a gentle curve up-river past the pleasure

gardens of Cremorne, to the right. Over forty years, Whistler

drew and painted the river in all seasons and weather from the

riverbank, from the bridge and nearby jetties and piers, and from

Pink and Silver – Chelsea, the Embankment, 1885, watercolour on white wove paper, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (cat. 50, detail)

the first-floor room of Lindsey Row with its balcony.

The streets of Chelsea were lined with small shops – the decaying

façade of Maunder’s Fish Shop in Lombard Street (later 72

Cheyne Walk) attracted many local artists, including Whistler.

The streetscape also attracted the local photographer James

Hedderly (1814–1885) who worked from a studio at 2 Duke

Street from 1868 to 1871 and later at 21 Riley Street, Kings Road.

Hedderly’s photographs record the lives of local street traders,

shoppers and promenaders before and after the construction of

the Chelsea Embankment, completed in 1874. Sections of the

streetscape between Beaufort Street and Cheyne Walk – Duke

Street and Lombard Street – were partly demolished to make

way for this new stretch of the Embankment and the picturesque

winding roadway along the riverbank was replaced by a wide new,

modern highway. Hedderly’s photographs (cats. 92–96) convey

these dramatic changes vividly.

The proximity of Lindsey Row to the Thames meant that the

river was a daily feature of Whistler’s existence there. There were

panoramic views from the upper floors of both his houses from

which he could observe passing barges, but through journeys on

the river itself he could become more closely acquainted with its

wharves and creeks and the riverside topography of Chelsea –

from the gardens at the Royal Hospital, along Cheyne Walk, past

the Pier Hotel at Cadogan Pier, past Battersea Pier and under

the narrow arches of Old Battersea Bridge to Cremorne Road

and beyond. The advent of passenger steamboats on the Thames

during the 1840s increased leisure traffic. As Herbert Fry advised

in 1880, ‘the small Steamers which ply every five minutes from

Chelsea to London Bridge for 2d., and to Woolwich for 5d.,

touching at the various piers on either side of the river, will enable

the visitor to London to make himself easily acquainted, at the

smallest possible expense, with this “great silent highway”’.100


Chelsea

107

Cat. no. 48Battersea, 1878, watercolour on off-white wove paper

British Museum, London

An almost monochromatic study, this may be connected with Whistler’s lithotints, such as the Early Morning

of 1878 (cat. 55). The colours are shades of grey, having a wonderful misty quality: some were mixed with

white; others have a touch of blue, as on the barges at right. Whistler built up the picture with a series of

washes. The reflection of the boat’s sail and the two barges behind were only one wash, but the boat itself

had at least three washes, laid on with plenty of water and drying with a hard line at the edge. Some of

the brushwork is angular, some spiky. Some effects, like the smoke, were obtained by carefully removing

paint, after the washes had dried. Further subtleties were achieved in the slender reflections of the three

chimneys, which were brushed hard over a couple of horizontal brushstrokes when the washes were nearly dry.



108

Cat. no. 49Blue and Silver: The Thames, 1882, watercolour on off-white paper

Private Collection, Ann Arbor, Michigan

In 1882 Whistler’s friend, the architect E.W. Godwin, was living at Westminster, looking down to Hungerford

Bridge and St Paul’s. This was not Whistler’s first watercolour (he had been painting watercolours since he was

ten) but it marked his increased interest in the medium. The view was vignetted, with details drawn delicately

with a small brush in shades of pink and orange, grey and purple. The masses of cloud and still water were

painted freely, using the rough texture of the paper for added effect. For the lights, areas of paper were left bare.


Chelsea

109

Cat. no. 50Pink and Silver – Chelsea, the Embankment, 1885, watercolour on white wove paper

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

This was done while Whistler was out sketching, with the young lithographer T.R. Way, on a windy

day on the Embankment.103 The Albert Bridge is seen in the background. The figures are touched

with pale orange, pink and red, set against the grey and blues of the sky. It was painted quickly, with

untidy washes, catching the effects of a moment in time. The brushwork is expressive, fluttering

selectively over the figures and the embankment, before settling, very precisely, on the butterfly.



110

Cat. no. 51Nocturne: Chelsea Embankment, 1883/84, pen and brown ink on cream wove paper

The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

This elaborate drawing – possibly started from nature and completed in the studio – shows the young trees

planted along the Embankment.102 In the distance are the lights of Chelsea shops. A few years later, in 1888,

one of Whistler’s ‘followers’, Theodore Roussel, etched the same scene in one his earliest etchings, Chelsea

Embankment with Albert Bridge in the Background (H.6). The free, scratchy use of the pen, the effect of the lights,

and figures not outlined but indicated by rough hatching, plus the impressionistic observation of the hansom

cab and figures superimposed on the drawing on the right, make this unique among Whistler’s drawings.


Chelsea

111

Cat. no. 52Copy of ‘Nocturne: Black and Gold – The Fire Wheel’, 20 April 1893, watercolour on off-white

paper laid down on cardThe Hunterian, University of Glasgow

This is a copy of Nocturne: Black and Gold – The Fire Wheel (Tate: YMSM 169). The original, showing

fireworks at Cremorne Gardens, was painted in the mid-1870s; despite several attempts by Whistler

to sell it to rich Americans in the 1890s, it was eventually bought by the painter and collector Arthur

Studd who left it to the Tate. The oil painting has darkened, and this watercolour records its earlier

appearance. The area of the fire wheel itself was painted in watercolour, with the paler areas left

bare, and the rest of the surface with deep greys and blues. The washes ran into each other, and the

drifting smoke and lights were applied in body colour, light over dark, to imitate the effect of the oil.



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An American in London: Whistler and the Thames