James McNeill Whistler Cliffs and Breakers

Date January - March 1884
Materials Oil on wood
Dimensions 12.4 cm x 21.6 cm
Marks None
Further information GLAHA 46391.
Andrew McLaren Young, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1980 (278, plate 188).

Note This is a very atmospheric painting. Using a rich, blue-grey paint, diluted to a thin ‘sauce’, Whistler washed in the sky and sea over a grey priming, giving the whole a calm, glassy look, broken only by the waves as they break at the foot of the cliffs. A few touches of white suggest the foam and spray. Notice that there are a number of ghostly looking boats on the horizon. This picture was probably painted during a visit Whistler made to St Ives in Cornwall in 1884 with his pupils Mortimer Menpes and Walter Sickert. Menpes wrote that, "The boats, the sea, the fishermen all fascinated him." However, the beach in the foreground is empty. There is nothing to disturb the tranquility of the moment.