Technique

The panel was primed with vertical strokes in pale grey, which show through the quickly and thinly painted sea and sky. The predominant colour is green – a vigorously painted grey-green sea, with a startling line of bottle green at the horizon – plus grey clouds broken with patches of turquoise sky. It is painted with soft, comparatively broad soft brushes, occasionally throwing up a ridge of thicker paint along the edges of the stroke.

Conservation History

Whistler wrote to the purchaser, Amy Lowell:

'I only beg ... that you will leave it in its frame for the next six months, when you may send it to Mr. Kennedy, Messrs. Wunderlich. New York, who will varnish it - and then you will see the picture in all its full brightness, as it was the day it was painted, for the first time -

Meanwhile it is most important that it should not be touched - as the signature is quite fresh - and indeed the whole picture is scarcely dry.' 1

The paint at the edge of the panel at left has been slightly abraded.