A Bridge

About this artwork

A Bridge follows the canons of eighteenth-century picturesque landscape imagery. The drawing has an academic quality which sets it apart from other sketches executed during Whistler's Rhineland tour, and the actual site has thus far eluded identification. The scene recalls a heavy stone bridge at Mayence, and similar bridges at Bingen and Coblentz were painted by Turner earlier in the century. Whistler could also have created a composite or imagined scene. Whistler drew with a soft lead, and the...