CHELSEA BRIDGE ~ Old 1882 James McNeil Whistler Original Art Print ETCHING RARE!

CHELSEA - Drawn and etched by J. A. McNeil Whistler!!PRINT DATE : This etching was printed in 1882; it is not a modern reproduction in any way.PRINT SIZE : Overall print size is 9 x 11 1/2 inches, actual scene size is 5 1/4 by 8 inches.PRINT CONDITION : Condition is excellent. Bright and clean, some minor age spotting in the white borders surrounding the print. Blank on reverse. Paper is quality woven rag stock paper.SHIPPING : Buyer to pay shipping, domestic orders receive priority mail, international orders receive regular air mail unless otherwise asked for. We take a variety of payment options. Full payment details will be in our email after auction close.We pack properly to protect your item!PRINT DESCRIPTION :Although the BATTERSEA BRIDGE was inconvenient for its users and flimsily constructed, as the last surviving wooden bridge on the Thames in the London area it was considered an important landmark, and many leading artists of the period were attracted to it. J. M. W. Turner, John Sell Cotman and John Atkinson Grimshaw produced significant paintings of the bridge. Walter Greaves, whose family owned a boathouse adjacent to the bridge and whose father had been boatman to Turner, painted numerous scenes of the bridge. Local resident and mentor to Greaves James McNeill Whistler created many images of it, including the influential Hokusai-inspired Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge (painted c. 1872–5), in which the dimensions of the bridge are intentionally distorted and Chelsea Old Church and the newly built Albert Bridge are visible through a stylised London fog. In this scene, the artist, seeing a grouping fo the subject which he wished to perpetuate, evidently sallied forth from his house hard by, plate in hand. The winter's day made lengthy work on the cold copper and impossibility. There was no time for any lengthy elaboration such as in other works. So the scene was rapidly sketched in, the artist not even thinking it necessary to reverse the subject so that it might be recognizable when printed. The suppleness of line, and the vivacity and personality of the rendering throughout, will give it a value not only to Mr. Whistler's countless admirers, but to those who regard etchings from an instructive, or even pleasurable point of view.American artist, born at Lowell, Massachusetts, on the 14th of July 1834. His father was Major G. W. Whistler, and his mother one of the Baltimore family of Winans. He was first heard of in Europe in 1857, when he had already been an art student, in Paris, in the studio of Gleyre. His first etchings, those known as "The French Set", were the means of bringing him under the notice of certain people interested in art, but the circulation of these first, like that of his later etchings, has always been more limited than their fame. The impressions from each plate are generally few. It was still in etching that Whistler continued his labors, and, coming to London in 1850, it appears, he almost at once addressed himself to the chronicle of the quaint riverside buildings and the craft of the great stream -- the Thames "below Bridge." The "French Set" had included De Hooch-like or Nicholas Maes-like genre pieces, such as "La Vieille aux loques", the "Marchande de moutarde", and "The Kitchen", this last incomparably improved and perfected by the retouching that was accomplished a quarter of a century after the first performance. The Thames series of sixteen etchings, wrought chiefly in 1859, disclosed a new vision of the river, in which there was expressed, with perfect draughtsmanship, with a hitherto unparalleled command of vivacious line, the form of barge and clipper, of warehouse, wharf and waterside tavern. "The Pool", "Thames Police" and "Black Lion Wharf" are perhaps the finest of this series. Before it was begun, Whistler, before he left Paris had proceeded far with a plate, existing only in the state of trial proof, and of extreme rarity. It is called "Paris, Île ... read more