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Limehouse

1859
Etching on Asian paper
K.40 (3/3)
Bequeathed by Joseph Whistler Revillon, 1955
Hunterian Art Gallery, GLAHA 46730

The harbour-master's bow-windowed house was on Broadway Wharf, on the north bank of the Thames. A distant sign reads 'CURTIS GIN', a distillery company on the Mile End Road. The deeply etched lines, heavy foul biting and fine detail, convey a gritty realism.

This etching may have been what inspired the French critic Charles Baudelaire im 1862 when he praised Whistler for etching 'wonderful tangles of rigging, yardarms and rope … the profound and intricate poetry of a vast capital.' 1.

Notes

1. C. Baudelaire, 'Peintres et Aqua-fortistes', Le Boulevard, [14th September 1862]; C. Pichis, ed., Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres Complètes, Paris 1866, pp. 1148, 1150.