Walking with Whistler

I sometimes marvel at what a living presence James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) remains in London. There are, of course, the several houses where he lived in Chelsea – on Cheyne Walk, Tite Street, and The Vale – and also Hampstead Heath, but equally haunting are the places where he painted and etched. One of my favourite spots to walk in his footsteps is the lower Thames, around Wapping, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. After moving to London from Paris in 1859, Whistler made some of his first London etchings there in 1859–60. Published in 1871 as A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects, they are known popularly as The Thames Set.

Of course, much of the river as Whistler knew it has since been transformed. The warehouses and wharfs he drew in such exquisite detail have become flats and office buildings. You no longer see armies of dock workers unloading ships or hear the clanking of ship fittings and the grinding of cranes.

Yet you can easily imagine Whistler at work. It is especially pleasing to imagine how he viewed this lower part of the Thames and the effects he sought to create. Some etchings, such as The Pool, he made from near the entrance of the pedestrian tunnel that ran between Wapping and Rotherhithe, standing on the Wapping side. Others he made by hopping from barge to barge on the river. His biggest artistic challenge in either case was to show the motion of men and boats on the river. He did this by creating unfocused, sparsely shaded images. His acquaintance with photography is also evident. While etching his lines crisply and precisely, he focused the viewer’s eye on selected parts of a composition, and so deliberately blurred areas of unequal depth.

While on the river, Whistler lodged at a cheap inn in Wapping (name and precise location unknown), where he caroused with labourers and longshoremen in the neighbourhood. He included some of them in his etchings to serve his artistic purposes. His figures anchor a scene and guide the viewer’s gaze to the initial plane. Often, too, they welcome viewers into the picture, as in The Pool, Eagle Wharf and Black Lion Wharf. Remove them and the eye leaps immediately to the background, without pausing to enjoy the rich complexity of the waterfront or feel the movement Whistler worked so hard to instil.

Yet, the best thing about these etchings of the lower Thames, as with his homes in Chelsea, is that in at least two instances the subjects he etched remain largely unchanged. The police station still stands, and despite alterations that have made it much larger, it is clearly recognisable as the building in Thames Police, particularly with its prominent bow windows. Take a cruise down the river and you can catch a line of sight very near to Whistler’s own. That is even easier to do at The Angel, a pub in Cherry Gardens, Bermondsey, where Whistler etched Rotherhithe. You may look out onto the same balcony that serves as the foreground in the picture. Close your eyes, and you might even imagine the mass of ships and their maze of rigging that Whistler so painstakingly drew, just as he did the warehouses along the waterfront.

While at The Angel, pause to enjoy a pint. Imagine yourself in Whistler’s now-vanished inn on the opposite side of the river, as part of another etching, Longshore Men 1859 (not one of the Thames Set). Imagine him drinking, smoking, laughing and joking with his new companions as he described his day’s work on the river and regaled them with stories of student life in Paris and his boyhood in America and Russia.

^{James McNeill Whistler, Tate Britain, 21 May – 27 September}

^{Daniel E. Sutherland is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Arkansas and author of Whistler: A Life for Art’s Sake (2014).}

^{Supported by the James McNeill Whistler Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Patrons, Tate Members and Tate Americas Foundation. The Whistler’s Finish Research and Conservation Project was supported by The Lunder Foundation. Associated research supported by the Manton Historic British Art Scholarship Fund. The media partner is The Times and The Sunday Times. Organised by Tate Britain with Van Gogh Museum and the Mesdag Collection.}