Black Lion Wharf

James McNeill Whistler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

When he moved to London in 1859, Whistler lodged near the Thames in the docklands south of Tower Bridge and began to make etchings of the river. New visual modes are explored here, with cropped forms and distinct spatial zones recalling Japanese woodblock prints—a genre he began collecting in Paris. Borrowing an effect from photographs, he renders the distant warehouses in sharp focus but treats closer forms broadly. Made in 1859, this etching was not published until 1871 in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects (the "Thames Set"). That year, Whistler also reproduced it on the wall behind his mother in the now famous painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black (Musée d’Orsay, Paris).

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