?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
JAMES A. M. WHISTLER Billingsgate.
Etching on cream laid paper, 1859. 148x222 mm; 5 7/8x8 7/8 inches, wide margins. Eighth state (of 8). A very good, well-inked impression.
Billingsgate is the site of the old fish market on the Thames, with London Bridge and the tower of Southwark Cathedral visible in the background. Whistler's vantage point appears to have been the Custom House Stairs; coincidentally, his brother-in-law's brother, Charles Haden, worked at the Customs House.
Whistler painstakingly reworked this plate more than any others from the "Thames Set.' It went through 8 states during which he redrew the figures, boats and sky before it was ultimately published in the widely-circulated art journal The Portfolio in 1878 (which accounts for the prevalence of this etching on the market still today). Kennedy 47.
