The Lime-Burner (W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street)

The Lime-Burner (W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street)

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As he had in La Marchande de moutarde in 1858, Whistler here focuses on a humble business and uses the architecture to frame a receding interior. The proprietor, William Jones, leans against a barrel in his yard, near artfully arranged ladders. At left, a long passageway ends in a glimpse of the water of East London Wharf. Limeburners reduced chalk and limestone in kilns to produce a key ingredient for mortar and plaster. Whistler included this print in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (the "Thames Set") in 1871.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Lime-Burner (W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street)The Lime-Burner (W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street)The Lime-Burner (W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street)The Lime-Burner (W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street)The Lime-Burner (W. Jones, Lime-Burner, Thames Street)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.