Variations in Pink and Grey: Chelsea

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) · 1871-1872

Like the prints in Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, this painting records a scene from everyday life in a modern city. Perhaps inspired by the vantage point of his second-story window, Whistler adopted the bird's-eye perspective typical of Hiroshige prints, in which distant objects appear high in the composition. The artist's view in 1872 would have encompassed the construction of the Chelsea Embankment, an enormous enterprise to reclaim acres of mud from the river and build massive, granite-faced walls and landing stages along the Thames; Whistler incorporated the construction fence and a newly planted sapling in his composition.