When he moved to London in 1859, Whistler lodged near the Thames in the docklands south of Tower Bridge and began to make etchings of the river. New visual modes are explored here, with cropped forms and distinct spatial zones recalling Japanese woodblock prints—a genre he began collecting in Paris. Borrowing an effect from photographs, he renders the distant warehouses in sharp focus but treats closer forms broadly. Made in 1859, this etching was not published until 1871 in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (the "Thames Set"). That year, Whistler also reproduced it on the wall behind his mother in the now famous painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).
Credit: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1917