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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)
The copper plate has not been located. It has an exceptionally broad, narrow horizontal format. The only etching that is wider is Whistler's biggest print, The Palaces 223, and dates from nearly twenty years later.
It was not, however, the first in which an extreme horizontal format had been used. Thames Warehouses 046 and Old Westminster Bridge 047, both dating from 1859, are on Hughes & Kimber plates measuring 76 or 77 x 204 mm. Clearly the shape of Westminster Bridge itself dictated the choice of plate shape and size.