The Thames in Ice

After Whistler moved from Paris to London in 1859, he found the river Thames to be a constant source of inspiration. Originally titled “The Twenty-fifth of December 1860. On the Thames,” this picture records a particular moment during a bitterly cold winter, when the river was frozen for more than fourteen weeks. Although he likely retouched the work later in the decade, Whistler claimed to have completed it in three days at an inn overlooking the river. The bold brushstrokes, somber palette, and thinly painted surface reinforce the realistic immediacy of the image. This work seems worlds away from the visual poetry of Whistler’s later Nocturnes, but there is a hint of his subsequent aestheticism in the misty gray atmosphere that envelops the factories on the far bank of the river.