Whistler Masterpieces Shown Together For First Time in Almost 100 Years

Currently on view at Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery… An American in London: Whistler and the Thames” — the first major exhibition ever devoted to American artist James McNeill Whistler’s early period in London, and the largest US display of his work in almost 20 whistler 3years!

Whistler, “one of the most influential painters of his time,” according to The Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art Julian Raby, emerged as an innovative and original artist in the 19th century while London was evolving into a modern city.

“…In a single show we’re able to look at the transformation of his work and the transformation of a city,” explained Raby.  “This is a huge opportunity for the US public to celebrate one of their greatest artistic figures.”

The exhibition showcases changing views of the European capital city’s iconic riverbanks and waterways, featuring more than 80 works from major museums in the US and Britain, including 20 important oil paintings of Chelsea and the Thames, masterful prints, and rarely seen drawings, watercolors and pastels.  It culminates with an ensemble of the artist’s famous Nocturnes, including the iconic “Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge.” Other highlights include the daytime industrial landscape “Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge,” the schooners at rest captured in whistler 1Wapping“and selections from the Thames Set, an early series of etchings depicting the river’s seedy dockyards and dubious characters.

A traveling exhibit, “An American in London: Whistler and the Thames” ends its tour in DC and is enhanced by the addition of nearly 50 masterpieces from the Freer Gallery of Art, which holds the world’s largest and finest collection of the artist’s work, including the famous Peacock Room. (Museum founder Charles Lang Freer met Whistler in London in 1890 and became his most important patron.)

This is the first time since the Freer Gallery opened in 1923 that these works will be on view with Whistlers from other institutions.

*An American in London: Whistler and the Thames is on view through August 17.