UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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Westminster Bridge in Progress

Impression: Colby College Museum of Art, Maine
Colby College Museum of Art, Maine
(2013.495)
Number: 77
Date: 1861
Medium: etching and drypoint
Size: 150 x 352 mm
Signed: 'Whistler.' at lower right
Inscribed: '1861.'
Set/Publication: no
No. of States: 1
Known impressions: 2
Catalogues: K.72; M.74; W.70
Impressions taken from this plate  (2)
Westminster Bridge in Progress is dated '1861' on the copper plate. It is one of a number of Thames views etched in 1861, including Vauxhall Bridge [75], Millbank [78], The Little Pool [79], Battersea Dawn (Cadogan Pier) [95] and Old Hungerford Bridge [76]. Lochnan comments:
'After attending a meeting of the Junior Etching Club on January 2 [1861] ... Whistler returned to the Thames and began to etch additional views in preparation for his forthcoming exhibition. Introducing a new theme into his work, he made several studies of bridges. The first of the six plates made on the Thames between January and the end of March was Westminster Bridge in Progress, which shows the beginning of the new bridge which was constructed in 1862 in place of the eighteenth-century stone bridge.' 1

1: Lochnan 1984 , p. 122.