Page 15 - whistler

Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aid Whistler

The Last of Old Westminster

1862
Oil on canvas
60.96 × 78.1 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

KEY TOPICS:

• The painting was done while the bridge was being built. (Pennell and Pennell)
• The Imperial War Museum is the dome seen in the center in the distance.

• The spot to the far left is where the current London County Hall stands but at the time was

most likely Simmon’s flour mills and wharves. (The County Hall)

• For perspective, to the right of the picture plane and the side of the viewer is the location of

Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster.

Arthur Severn, whose brother was a friend of Whistler’s, remembered of this paining: “On my

return from Rome to join my brother in his room in Manchester Building, on the Thames at
Westminster Bridge (where the New Scotland Yard now is), I found Whistler beginning his picture

of Westminster Bridge. My brother had given him permission to use our sitting-room, with its bow-

windows looking over the river and towards the bridge. He was always courteous and pleasant in
manner, and it was interesting to see him at work. The bridge was in perspective, still surrounded

with piles, for it had only just been finished. It was the piles with their rich colour and delightful

confusion that took his fancy, not the bridge, which hardly showed. He would look steadily at a pile

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