Technique

Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church. Freer Gallery of Art

It was painted extremely thinly on a thinly primed panel (the wood glows through the subtle greens and browns and the grey/blue sky, and the wavy grain creates a mysterious misty element to the scene). It was painted with smooth washes and the details are conveyed with liquid spots of paint, applied with a small brush, and have the luminous quality of Vermeer's paintings.

The Freer Gallery of Art website comments:

'Unlike any of the other works in this exhibition, this was painted on an unprepared panel, so it more clearly reveals the thinness of Whistler's oil washes. The long vees of the wood grain meet in the middle ground, uniting river and sky, and adding a purely decorative, non-representational, element to Whistler's wonderful arrangement.' 1

Conservation History

According to Freer Gallery files, it was cleaned and varnished in 1937, and resurfaced both in 1938 and 1952-53.

Frame

Small Dowdeswell, frame, made for Whistler's exhibition in 1884 [11.1 cm]. 2