Watercolours

Whistler learnt to paint in watercolour as a teenager at West Point Military Academy in America. During the 1880s he turned increasingly to this medium, enjoying its simplicity and spontaneity. He had to be quick and precise because he could not scrape away the paint and start again as he could with oil paint. Because of this, his watercolours have an attractive freshness.

Whistler suggested buildings and figures by merging and overlapping areas of colour, and added detail with thin spiky strokes. He exploited the thin, liquid nature of the paint, which easily spread over the paper, to create a sense of atmosphere and mood. He would make these thin washes dry hard-edged or give a softer effect by allowing colours to bleed into one another. However, he sometimes used the paint almost dry, dragging the brush over the grain of the paper to create a variety of textures.

Watercolour was considered to be inferior to oil painting at the time, because it did not require the same amount of time, effort and training, but Whistler helped to give it new importance.