This is a 20th century restrike of the 1859 etching "Thames Police" (also known as "Wapping Wharf), by the famous American artist JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER (1834-1903). Printed on a thick, creamy paper. Details in the print are very sharp.
Measurements are 6" x 8 3/4" inside the plate mark and the sheet measures 12" by 16."
The original print was printed on thin paper and only about 80 impressions are known.
Shows a view of the Thames at low tide, at Wapping Wharf. The Thames Police tower stands on the right, next to a building marked “Wapping Wharf.” Thames police officers and their skiffs are pulled up on the shore.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler altered the course of art history with his radical techniques and adoption of Asian design principles, which emphasized a two-dimensional flattening of painted forms and their arrangement into abstract patterns. His works are held in some of the world's greatest museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian.
Whistler promoted the doctrine that art should not serve narrative, but rather project the artist’s subjective feelings through the medium. His revolutionary methods changed the approaches to oil paint, pastel, watercolor, etching—even interior design and the decorative arts.
This artwork was first exhibited in The Works of James Whistler – Etchings and Dry Points at E. Thomas’s print shop, 39 Old Bond Street in 1861, and then at the Société Nationale des Beaux- Arts, Paris, 1862. It was published in A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects, (the Thames Set) as ‘Wapping Wharf’ (no. 2).