St. James's Street

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Whistler's busy urban image focuses on a central London thoroughfare that connects Pall Mall and Piccadilly. The etching offers a view from the terrace of what was then the Albermarle Hotel on Piccadilly downhill towards St. James's Palace, a complex of Tudor buildings that gave the street and surrounding district their names. In the foreground a policeman stands, perhaps directing traffic, near awnings that shield shopfronts. The image reverses the orientation of the actual view and would be reissued as a lithograph—correctly oriented—in "Vanity Fair" on July 2, 1878 (see: 1985.1161.34). Today the street is home to several private clubs, including White's, Boodle's and Brooks's.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art