The Tall Bridge

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Whistler's printer Thomas Way wrote about this work: "He used Iithotint also without the prepared half-tint for three of his earliest efforts, and an interesting example is "The Tall Bridge", also drawn and printed for 'Piccadilly' but not used; in this instance it is doubtful if half a dozen copies exist beyond the twelve proofs on mounted Japanese paper. It is a tall drawing of two piers of the very quaint old wooden Battersea Bridge, which he pictured so often with the brush, the needle and the chalk.

The structure is drawn with firm chalk lines and washes of delicate tone laid over the whole to draw it together, very much as he made a painting in ink upon his Venice plates, only with this difference—that he needed to repeat the painting for each impression of the etching, while what he did upon the stone repeated itself automatically in the printing. - Some proofs were pulled in a pale brownish color, and are particularly beautiful." T. B. Way, The Print-Collector'a Quarterly, Vol. Ill, No. 8.