Titles

Whistler's original title is not known. The accepted title varies only in punctuation:

• 'Grey and Silver – The Thames' (1904, Royal Scottish Academy). 1
• 'Grey and Silver: The Thames' (1915, Colnaghi). 2
• 'Grey and Silver: The Thames' (1980, YMSM). 3

'Grey and Silver: The Thames' is the preferred title, in conformity with other titles.

Description

A river scene in vertical format. In the foreground is a road along the riverside, and on the far bank, factories, factory chimneys and warehouses. On the river, to left, is a sailing barge.

Site

Grey and Silver: The Thames is a view of the Thames from what is now the Savoy Hotel, with Charing Cross Railway Bridge (built in 1864) barely visible on the right.

The tall chimney seen across the river is the Shot Tower at the Lambeth Lead Works, which stood on the South Bank of the River Thames, between Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. It was a prominent landmark and favoured subject for artists, including Joseph Mallard William Turner (1775-1851). It was designed by David Riddal Roper and built for Thomas Maltby & Co. in 1826. It was demolished to make way for the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which opened in 1967.

In 1896 Whistler made a lithotint, The Thames, the last of his printed Nocturnes, of the same view. The lithotint is very close in composition to Grey and Silver: The Thames, even to the inclusion, in wash, of several barges sailing downstream like the loosely painted barges in the oil painting, and the diagonal line of the embankment in the foreground. 4