Rotherhithe

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) focused many of his works on the Thames. He stayed at a pub in the unfashionable area of Wapping during 1859, so that he could have easy access to London's docklands and produced a set of sixteen etchings which he called The Thames Set. He chose sites which were threatened by the creation of the river embankment, and began recording their vanishing 'beauties'.

Charles Baudelaire, (the French author) greatly admired these prints when they were exhibited in Paris in 1862. He described them as 'representing the banks of the Thames: wonderful tangles of rigging, yardarms and rope, a hotchpotch of fog, furnaces and corkscrews of smoke: the profound and intricate poetry of a vast capital'.

These etchings established Whistler's reputation in Britain, France and America.
Included in the published Thames Set in 1871as Wapping, this plate is usually known by its earlier title, Rotherhithe, under which it was exhibited by Whistler at the Royal Academy in 1862. The figures in the foreground are seated on the balcony of the Angel Inn at Cherry Gardens, Rotherhithe, from which Whistler painted his oils One of the buildings on the right has a wooden elevator for unloading vessels carrying grain and seed. At the left of the image the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral can be seen through the rigging.