Early Morning, Battersea (Battersea Dawn) (Cadogan Pier)
James McNeill Whistler
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Whistler here responds to the calm of the Thames at dawn, placing a beached rowboat across the foreground , and small sailboats clustered around a wooden dock at center. Beyond is a wooden ferry terminal on Cadogan Pier and Battersea Bridge extending across the river. Drypoint was combined with etching to create soft effects evocative of misty water under an overcast sky. The was like finished in 1863, and published in 1871 in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (the "Thames Set").
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
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.