Old Battersea Bridge
1879Etching and drypoint on laid paper (watermark, Strasbourg Lily)
K.177 (4/5)
Purchased, 1972
Hunterian Art Gallery, GLAHA 46793
The massive timber bridge appears in many of Whistler's works, including his famous screen, Blue and Silver: Screen, with Old Battersea Bridge (Hunterian Art Gallery).
The Fine Art Society published the etching in an edition of fifty, which Whistler printed over the next ten years. The carefully modulated film of ink and exaggerated curve of the bridge show the influence of Japanese woodcuts, such as Hokusai's Under the Mannen Bridge, Fukagawa, ca 1830/1835.
The ship owner and collector Leonard Gow, a Glasgow alumnus, once owned this print.