The Thames / James McNeill Whistler

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Record Details

Accession Number
1954/1.463
Title
The Thames
Artist Nationality
American
Artist Life Dates
1834-1903
Object Creation Date
1896
Object Creation Place
North and Central America (continent)
United States (nation)
Creation Place 2
United States (nation)
Inscription
On the stone, in the water, l.r.: Butterfly monogram Collector's mark: Rosalind Birnie Philip. Lugt 405
Dimensions
27.5 cm x 27.4 cm (10 13/16 in. x 10 13/16 in.)
Century
19th century
Primary Object Classification
Print
Physical Description
This work portrays a view across a river, whose surface is dotted with shipping. Drawn from a very high vantage point, a roadway is seen through a screen of nearly leafless trees at the bottom of the image; in the distance the far bank of the shore is congested with buildings, some towers--particularly a large one to the right of center--and smoke blowing away and to the right from the viewer can be seen.
Subject Matter
This view of London from the top floor of the new Savoy Hotel brings together many of Whistler's precepts about art. The flatness and division of the vertical format into horizontal strata shows his affinities with Asian art; it is a nocturne--Whistler's great signature subject; as his work was always evolving towards nuance, effacement of details, and understatement, this lithograph must be reckoned as one of his great achievements as a printmaker. It also recalls the transformation from the quotidian to the beautiful that is the aim of the artist as Whistler described it in his "Ten O'Clock" lecture in 1885:
"And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy-land is before us—then the wayfarer hastens home; the working man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone."
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Technical Details

Image Size
983 x 1357
File Size
211 KB
Record
1954/1.463
Link to this Item
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-1954-sl-1.463/1954_1.463.jpg

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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/api/manifest/musart:1954-SL-1.463:1954_1.463.JPG

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"The Thames; James McNeill Whistler." In the digital collection University of Michigan Museum of Art. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-1954-sl-1.463/1954_1.463.jpg. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 29, 2024.
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