Millbank

James McNeill Whistler

1861 · Etching and drypoint, printed in black ink on ivory laid Japan; fifth state of five · Drawings and Prints

Sharply receding mooring posts and a high embankment at right direct our eye toward distant warehouses and a church in Lambeth, on the south bank of the Thames. This effect, together with the cropped form of a massive barge at lower left, and spatial leaps in the foreground, echo devices found in Japanese woodblock prints. Whistler selected this image to advertise an 1861 exhibition of his etchings held by the print dealer Edmund Thomas at 39 Old Bond Street. A decade later, Ellis & Green published it in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (the "Thames Set").

Artist

James McNeill Whistler

Date

1861

Medium

Etching and drypoint, printed in black ink on ivory laid Japan; fifth state of five

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1917