James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903)
Free Trade Wharf
1877
Etching on brown paper
3 7/8 x 7 1/4″ (9.8 x 18.5 cm)
Wetmore Print Collection, Connecticut College
FW-1108

This print is from Whistler’s Thames Prints series,  in which the dirty, derelict and overcrowded side of the River Thames was honestly presented. In 1858, an event called “The Great Stink” broke out in central London, in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was left on the bank of the River Thames. Whistler applied loose and sketchy lines to capture the highly disordered and chaotic state of the River Thames in that period, exposing and criticizing the massive destructive influences brought to the nature by industrialization and other human activities initiated in the 19th century.