The Last of Old Westminster

Whistler called it The Last of Old Westminster, yet by the time he painted it, in 1862, the old stone bridge had already been taken down. What crosses the Thames here is the new Westminster Bridge, built on the same line and opened that May, still wrapped in the timber scaffolding that workmen were stripping away in early July. He painted it from a bow window in rooms at Manchester Buildings, near Parliament, belonging to Walter Severn, looking down on the bridge and a rickety steamboat pier.

Walter's younger brother, the painter Arthur Severn, watched him work. He expected it to go quickly. It took weeks, and Whistler sometimes came only once a week. To Severn the wooden piles all looked the same grey and the workmen's shirts the same white, yet Whistler would stare at one pile for a long time, mix the colour, then make a single downward stroke and leave it. Once a hansom cab pulled up on the bridge and he caught it in a few touches. Boats and figures changed from day to day, and he simply painted new ones over the old. Severn admitted that the household got rather tired of it.

An X-ray shows something older underneath, a portrait of a seated woman turned on its side, probably Joanna Hiffernan, Whistler's model and companion.