This view of the Thames from the window of Whistler’s suite at the Savoy Hotel is one of his final printed Nocturnes, a series of paintings and works on paper of nighttime scenes imbued with an ethereal glow. Whistler’s lithographic compositions were drawn directly onto the stone, which reversed the orientation of his original drawing. Here, the silver and gray tones that lend a velvet tactility to the chilly atmosphere and dreamlike haziness were created with black ink tusche washes applied with a brush to the stone, as well as scraping techniques, in a process called lithotint. The two-dimensional flatness of the image is emphasized by the distinct sections of land, river, city, and sky, mirroring the ordered structure of traditional Japanese woodblock prints. The melancholic cast of the riverscape at dusk was perhaps informed by the artist’s grief at the recent loss of his beloved wife Beatrix.
The Thames was well received by the public and art experts alike. Théodore Duret viewed the print at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where it was awarded a medal, and noted, “It is infused with transparency and incredible lightness, and I was astonished by it” (MacDonald and Newton 1987: 160).
Claudine Dixon
2024
Bibliography
MacDonald and Newton 1987. Margaret F. MacDonald and Joy Newton, “Correspondence Duret-Whistler,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (November 1987): 160.
