We look slightly down onto and across a wide, boat-filled river under a cloudy sky at the far bank, which is lined with buildings, in this loosely painted, horizontal landscape. Four long, wooden boats are pulled up side-by-side to our right, so most of their prows are cropped by the right edge of the composition. Their amber-brown sails are tied up to the vertical masts and angled spars, which create a row of diagonal lines jutting into the painting from the right edge. The boats’ sterns are painted moss green, and the boat farthest from us has what could be a small dingy tethered off the…
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Battersea Reach

painter James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834 - 1903)

c. 1863

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 50.8 × 76.36 cm (20 × 30 1/16 in.) ; framed: 70.49 × 95.89 × 7.62 cm (27 3/4 × 37 3/4 × 3 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Corcoran Collection (Bequest of James Parmelee, 1941)
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art

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