Nicholas Sack, Lost In The City
Aside from the four thousand that dwell within the Barbican, almost no-one lives in the City of London anymore – it is a place designed entirely for the purpose of work. The other week, in my first selection from the photography of Nicholas Sack, I showed you his pictures of the men in suits who go there to work. Today, I publish a selection from his pictures of everybody else – those of us who are perforce outsiders in this curious environment.
For tourists who wander the dense web of narrow streets, the City exists merely as theme park for their amusement. Like a world designed by Charles Dickens’ character Mr Gradgrind, everything is for utility and weary clerks struggle vainly to find places of rest, perching on ledges and architectural outcrops designed not for repose but to encourage them to return to work.
With irony and sly humour, these astute photographs expose the contradictions of the human presence within this locus of power – where children and families have no place, where displays of affection are anachronistic and where women are automatically at odds with the environment simply through the fact of their gender. Nicholas Sack’s vision recalls William Shakespeare’s lines as appropriated by Aldous Huxley, we see the City of London through his eyes and wonder –“Oh brave new world, that has such people in’t.”
Photographs copyright © Nicholas Sack
“Uncommon Ground,” Nicholas Sack’s new book of photography is available here
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At Embassy Electrical Supplies
Mehmet Murat
It comes as no surprise to learn that at Embassy Electrical Supplies in Clerkenwell, you can buy lightbulbs, fuses and cables, but rather more unexpected to discover that, while you are picking up your electrical hardware, you can also purchase olive oil, strings of chili peppers and pomegranate molasses courtesy of the Murat family groves in Cyprus and Turkey.
At certain fashionable restaurants nearby, “Electrical Shop Olives” are a popular feature on the menu, sending customers scurrying along to the Murats’ premises next morning to purchase their own personal supply of these fabled delicacies that have won acclaim in the global media and acquired a legendary allure among culinary enthusiasts.
How did such a thing come about, that a Clerkenwell electrical shop should be celebrated for olive oil? Mehmet Murat is the qualified electrician and gastronomic mastermind behind this singular endeavour. I found him sitting behind his desk at the rear of the shop, serving customers from his desk and fulfilling their demands whether electrical or culinary, or both, with equal largesse.
“I am an electrician by trade,” he assured me, just in case the fragrance of wild sage or seductive mixed aromas of his Mediterranean produce stacked upon the shelves might encourage me to think otherwise.
“I arrived in this country from Cyprus in 1955. My father came a few years earlier, and he got a job and a flat before he sent for us. In Cyprus, he was a barber and, according to our custom, that meant he was also a dentist. But he got a job as an agent travelling around Cyprus buying donkeys for Dr Kucuk, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots at that time – the donkeys were exported and sold to the British Army in Egypt. What he did with the money he earned was to buy plots of land around the village of Louroujina, where I was born, and plant olive saplings. He and my mother took care of them for the first year and after that they took care of themselves. Once they came to the UK, they asked relatives to watch over the groves. They used to send us a couple of containers of olive oil for our own use each year and sold the rest to the co-operative who sold it to Italians who repackaged it and sold it as Italian oil.
I trained as an electrician when I left school and I started off working for C.J. Bartley & Co in Old St. I left there and became self-employed, wiring Wimpy Bars, Golden Egg Restaurants and Mecca Bingo Halls. I was on call twenty-four hours and did electrical work for Faye Dunaway, the King of Jordan’s sister and Bill Oddie, among others. Then I bought this shop in 1979 and opened up in 1982 selling electrical supplies.
In 2002, when my father died, I decided I was going to bring all the olive oil over from Louroujina and bottle it all myself, which I still do. But when we started getting write-ups and it was chosen as the best olive oil by New York Magazine, I realised we had good olive oil. We produce it as we would for our own table. There is no other secret, except I bottle it myself – bottling plants will reheat and dilute it.
If you were to come to the village where I was born. you could ask any shopkeeper to put aside oil for your family use from his crop. I don’t see any difference, selling it here in my electrical shop in Clerkenwell. It makes sense because if I were to open up a shop selling just oil, I’d be losing money. The electrical business is still my bread and butter income, but many of the workshops that were my customers have moved out and the Congestion Charge took away more than half my business.
Now I have bought a forty-five acre farm in Turkey. It produces a thousand tons of lemons in a good year, plus pomegranate molasses, sweet paprika, candied walnuts and chili flakes. We go out and forage wild sage, wild oregano, wild St John’s wort and wild caper shoots. My wife is there at the moment with her brother who looks after the farm, and her other brother looks after the groves in Cyprus.”
Then Mehmet poured a little of his precious pale golden olive oil from a green glass bottle into a beaker and handed it to me, with instructions. The name of his farm, Murat Du Carta, was on the label beneath a picture of his mother and father. He explained I was to sip the oil, and then hold it in my mouth as it warmed to experience the full flavour, before swallowing it. The deliciously pure oil was light and flowery, yet left no aftertaste on the palate. I picked up a handful of the wild sage to inhale the evocative scent of a Mediterranean meadow, and Mehmet made me up a bag containing two bottles of olive oil, truffle-infused oil, marinated olives, cured olives, chili flakes and frankincense to carry home to Spitalfields.
We left the darkness of the tiny shop, with its electrical supplies neatly arranged upon the left and its food supplies tidily stacked upon the right. A passing cyclist came in to borrow a wrench and the atmosphere was that of a friendly village store. Outside on the pavement, in the sunshine, we joined Mark Page who forages truffles for Mehmet, and Mehmet’s son Murat (known as Mo). “I do the markets and I run the shop, and I like to eat,” he confessed to me with a wink.
Carter, the electrical shop cat
From left to right, Mark Page (who forages truffles), Murat Murat (known as Mo) and Mehmet Murat.
Embassy Electical Supplies, 76 Compton St, Clerkenwell, EC1V 0BN
Billy Dove, Committee Member
In Billy’s garden
Even before I arrived for the interview, Billy Dove had prepared a helpful list of all the celebrities that he had met, on the back of a large white envelope with a City of London gilt insignia upon on it, as the basis for my feature. So I think he was a little disarmed when I revealed that I was not particularly interested in famous people, I was more curious to learn his story. Yet, if he was a little crestfallen at my unexpected declaration, Billy soon rallied his spirits, demonstrating the resilient humour that is his distinctive characteristic.
In the tiny pink flat in Evershed House off Petticoat Lane where Billy has lived for the past forty years with his partner Joseph Akoto-Mehsah, he is surrounded by photographs and other fond mementos of his ceaseless social activities in the charitable sphere. With astonishing mental energy, Billy has pursued his talent in the administration of committees and meetings. Where others might go to any length to avoid reports, minutes and agendas, Billy has embraced collective decision-making with a passion that has consumed his life – by sitting on thirty committees. Billy’s flat is filled with paper and his days are crowded with engagements, and he thrives upon juggling it all.
The crucial step was Billy’s decision to live at Toynbee Hall, the centre of charitable endeavour in the East End, where the Workers’ Educational Association and Community Service Volunteers started. Here he befriended the disgraced ex-Minister of Defence, John Profumo, who came to the East End to redeem himself by cleaning toilets after a sexual scandal that destroyed his career – though,“maybe he only did it for the press photographers on his first day,” Billy disclosed.
“That’s me and the old Duke,” Billy informed me as he held up a photograph of him and Prince Philip with a flourish,”I’ve met the Duke of Edinburgh loads of times, I was there when he opened the tiger house at London Zoo. He had been round the East End, and ended up at Toynbee Hall for drinks the day before and so the next morning he said to me, ‘Not you again?!” As he brought out more and more pictures of his celebrity encounters, I realised that if I was interested in Billy then I could not ignore these photographs which meant so much to him, because they were evidence of how far the boy from Bridlington had come.
“I come from Flamborough Head near Bridlington, and I came down to London to do teacher training in September 1958. I did my teaching practice at John Scurr School, Bethnal Green, and I just fell for the kids, the parents, the neighbourhood, the whole works. So I vowed I’d come back here and I got a job teaching at Sir John Cass School in 1960. I came to live Toynbee Hall in 1962 as a resident volunteer and in those days you could live in some comfort for £4.50 a week, bed and breakfast and evening meal.
In 1965, I got a most unusual job at the Geffrye Museum, showing schools around and running activities on Saturdays when there was a club for children. All the local kids used to queue up at the front door and we let them have the run of the museum, doing quizzes and all kinds of activities. It was run by Molly Norman who was in the forefront of museum education work, there was a very lively atmosphere and we’d take them on trips to the big museums. Some of those kids had never been on the Central Line before.
I found I had an affinity with special needs children and I did those tours at the museum, and I became involved with the Rochelle School in Arnold Circus. It was a special school then and the kids were bussed in from all over, but I made a point of home visits to learn more about their backgrounds and meet their parents. Many of those kids lived in poverty and not all of them had dads, and some had dads that were in prison. I got so drawn into it that I went and did an extra year’s diploma in working with kids with special needs. Afterwards, I worked with kids in the playground at the Attlee Centre in Spitalfields and then became their fundraiser. After twenty-three years working there, I met Clement Attlee – he was eighty but still alert.
In 1997, when I retired officially, I thought I’d get involved with the Common Council in the City of London and I got elected. At first, I was appointed to two committees and now I’m on thirty! Most committees meet once a month and sub-committees meet at different times throughout the year, so this is how I have spent the last twelve years. In particular, I am Chairman of the City Bridge Trust and we give away about fifteen million pounds a year to charitable activities in London. Eight hundred years ago, the Crown gave us wharfs so the Trust could use the rent to pay for the upkeep of bridges, but the wharfs became derelict and the Trust sold them to buy other more valuable land around Tottenham Court Rd and today the Trust decides how to spend that surplus income.”
Aged six years old. Brighams photo studio, Bridlington, 1945.
At school, nine years old
Portrait of Billy by a member of Toynbee Hall Art Club, 1960s
Billy and his partner Joseph Akoto-Mehsah in a photographic studio in Wentworth St, 1973
With John Profumo, the disgraced Minister of Defence, and actress Valerie Hobson at Toynbee Hall in the late sixties.
Billy launches a hot air balloon to highlight the plight of the homeless at St Paul’s, 2011.
Flirting with Ann Widecombe at Prince Philip’s ninetieth at Buckingham Palace.
Presenting a cheque for £100,000 to Toynbee Hall for their work with the elderly.
As Master of the Worshipful Society of Parish Clerks, 2000
Congratulating Prince Philip on his ninetieth birthday.
“Not you again,” Prince Philip’s comment upon meeting Billy at the opening of the new tiger house at London Zoo.
Billy and Joseph meet the Queen at the Barbican.
Billy and Mo Farah
Billy and Tom Daley
Billy’s roll call of celebrities
Billy Dove at home
First & last portraits copyright © Colin O’Brien
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John Claridge’s Afternoons Well Spent
Between 1989 and 2000, photographer John Claridge occupied a building in Rivington St where he set up his home and his studio. While pursuing commercial and documentary photography, John also took time to create the personal work which you see here during his long afternoons. These are just a few compelling examples from a continuous vein of endeavour that has extended throughout his long career.
John’s nudes share a paradoxical sense of mystery – they are simultaneously ethereal yet equally exuding a powerful physical presence that is vividly of this world. Often masked or withholding identity in some way, these women always retain self-possession and inhabit their own space – one which is mutable like that of a dream. A strange universe where a steam train can coalesce out of the miasma.
John respects the power of women in his photography, celebrating their beauty, paying homage to their softness and even fragility but also admitting their strength in body and spirit. Enveloped within their languorous rapture, they regard us askance with unassailable authority.
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
Click to buy a copy of John Claridge’s new book of photography AFTERNOONS WELL SPENT published by Cafe Royal Books today at £5
Take a look at
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round One)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Two)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Three)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Four)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Five)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Six)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Seven)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Eight)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Nine)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Ten)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Eleven)
John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Twelve)
and
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act One)
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act Two)
John Claridge’s Clowns (The Final Act)
and
and these other pictures by John Claridge
Along the Thames with John Claridge
At the Salvation Army with John Claridge
A Few Diversions by John Claridge
Signs, Posters, Typography & Graphics
Views from a Dinghy by John Claridge
In Another World with John Claridge
A Few Pints with John Claridge
Some East End Portraits by John Claridge
Sunday Morning Stroll with John Claridge
So Long, Jocasta Innes
Jocasta Innes died at home in Spitalfields over the weekend and today I am republishing my profile as a tribute to a talented woman who enriched so many people’s lives through her creative thinking.
Jocasta Innes
Even before I met her, Jocasta Innes had been part of my life. I shall never forget the moment, shortly after my father lost his job, when my mother came home with a copy of “The Pauper’s Cookbook” by Jocasta Innes, engendering a sinking feeling as I contemplated the earthenware casserole upon the cover – which conjured a Dickensian vision of a future sustained upon gruel. Yet the irony was that this book, now a classic of its kind, contained a lively variety of recipes which although frugal were far from mundane.
Imagine my surprise when I went round to Jocasta’s kitchen in the magnificent hidden eighteenth century house in Spitalfields where she had lived since 1979 and there was the same pot upon the draining board. I opened the lid in wonder, fascinated to come upon this humble object after all these years – an image I have carried in my mind for half a lifetime and now an icon of twentieth century culture. It was full of a tomato sauce, not so different from the photograph upon the famous book cover. Here was evidence – if it should ever be needed – that Jocasta had remained consistent to her belief in the beauty of modest resourcefulness, just as the world had recognised that her thrifty philosophy of make-do-and-mend was not merely economic in straightened times but also allowed people the opportunity to take creative possession of their personal environment – as well as being a responsible use of limited resources.
“That was the one that made me famous,'” Jocasta admitted to me when we sat down together at her scrubbed kitchen table with a copy of “The Pauper’s Cook Book,” “I continually meet people who say, ‘I had that book when I was a student and left home to live on my own for the first time.'” And then, contemplating the trusty hand-turned casserole, she confided, “A lot of people didn’t like the slug of gravy running down the side on the cover.”
Yet “The Pauper’s Cookbook,” was just the beginning for Jocasta. It became one of a string of successful titles upon cookery and interior design – especially paint effects – that came to define the era and which created a business empire of paint ranges and shops. Forty years later, Jocasta was still living in the house that she used to try out her ideas, where you could find almost every paint effect illustrated, and where I visited to learn the story of this superlatively resourceful woman who made a career out of encouraging resourcefulness in others.
“It all started when I was living in this tiny backstreet cottage in Swanage which was only fourteen foot six inches wide and I wanted to give it a bit of style. I got a book of American Folk Art from the library and plundered it for designs, cutting my own stencils out of cereal boxes. And I did a design on the walls of my little girls’ bedroom with tulips up the walls, it was so incredibly pretty.
I thought my parents had unbelievably bad taste, although I realise now it was part of the taste of their time. They loved the colours of rust and brown which I loathe but what captured my imagination was that they had some beautiful Chinese things. My father worked for Shell in China and I was born in Nanjing, one of four children. It was very lonely in a way. There were only about a dozen other children who weren’t Chinese and there wasn’t much mixing in those days. My mother taught eight to ten of us in a dame’s school with an age range of eight to thirteen. I don’t know how she did it. We had exams and there was a lot of rivalry, because if your younger sister did better than you it was pretty painful. She was a Girton Girl and must have taught us pretty well because we all went to Cambridge and so did my daughters.
I worked for the Evening Standard for a while but I was very bad journalist because I was too timid. I’ve always lived by writing and because I had done French and Spanish at Girton, I could do translations. I was desperately poor when I left my first husband and lived in Swanage, so I grabbed any translation work I could and I translated five bodice rippers from French to English, about a tedious girl called Caroline. I got so I could do it automatically and, me and my second husband, we lived on that. We just made ends meet.
“The Pauper’s Cookbook” was my first book and I had a lot of fun doing it. I planned it on two and sixpence per person per meal which would now be about 50p. And I followed it with “The Pauper’s Homemaking Book.” My mother did the embroidery and I covered a chair, it was tremendously home made and full of innocent delight in being a bit clever.
Publisher Frances Lincoln thought the chapter on paint effects could become its own book and that was “Paint Magic.” I fell in with some rich relations who had estate painters trained by Colefax & Fowler and I watched them dragging a lilac wall with pale grey and it was riveting. I didn’t know about glazes, my attempts were primitive compared to theirs. One of John Fowler’s young men, Graham Shire, he taught me how to do tortoiseshell effect and when he showed me the finished result, he said, “Magic!” Nobody liked the title at first. We had a book launch at Harrods and I thought it was going to be a handful of hard-up couples who wanted to decorate their bedsits but half the audience were rich American ladies who had flown over specially and we sold three hundred copies, pretty good for a book about paint.
I was offered a job by Cosmopolitan as Cookery and Design Editor. It was the only time I earned what I would call big money and I sent my girls to college and put my youngest daughter through Westminster School. Once I turned my back on it, I found all the debutantes in London were learning paint finishes and starting little colleges to teach it, and the bottom fell out of the paint finish market. A friend showed me a book called “Shaker Style” and I thought, ‘The writing’s on the wall.”
When I sold the house in Swanage and came to London in 1979, I only had a small amount of money. I was a single parent and my children were six and four. Friends told me to look for a house at the end of the tube lines. But I came on a tour around Spitalfields and Douglas Blaine of the Spitalfields Trust said to me, sotto voce, “I think this one might interest you.” It was part of a derelict brewing complex and the windows were covered with corrugated iron. I climbed onto the roof of what is now my larder and got in through an upper window, I prised apart the corrugated iron to let in the light and saw the room was waist deep in old televisions, mattresses, fridges and cookers. Later, I pulled up five layers of lino with bottletops between them that nobody had bothered to remove. It was tremendously mad, but fun and exciting. I said to Douglas, “I’m up for this!”
I’ve always been a gifted amateur and I think I do best in adversity.”
The Pauper’s Cookbook, first published 1971.
Jocasta’s casserole became an icon of twentieth century culture.
“The Pauper’s Cookbook” made me famous but I am more fond of my “Country Kitchen.”
Jocasta showed you how to do it yourself in her Spitalfields house in the nineteen eighties.
Portrait of Jocasta Innes © Lucinda Douglas-Menzies
As part of the recent Huguenots of Spitalfields Festival, there was a service of thanksgiving at Christ Church in which Jolyon Tibbitts, Upper Bailiff of the Worshipful Company of Weavers stood up and read my story A Dress of Spitalfields Silk to the assembled congregation. First recorded in 1130, the Weavers is the oldest livery company in the City of London and so, fascinated by the history of this arcane body, I accepted Jolyon Tibbitts’ invitation to visit him at their headquarters in the Saddlers’ Hall, Gutter Lane, next to St Pauls.
The textile industry was the basis of the country’s economy when the Weavers’ Company began – before the first London Bridge was built in 1176 or the first Mayor took office in 1189, in an era referred to by Medieval writers as “a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” Through their charter, the members paid a sum to the crown in return for certain rights that protected the interests of their industry. In the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer writes of “A Haberdasher, a Dyer, a Carpenter, a Weaver and a Carpet-maker were among our ranks, all in the livery of one impressive fraternity.”
The Weavers’ Company sought to shield their members against competition at first from Flemish weavers in the fourteenth century and again, from Huguenot weavers, in the seventeenth century yet, on each occasion, the immigrants became absorbed into the company. Ultimately, more destructive to the industry were cheap imports introduced by the East India Company, reducing the Spitalfields weavers to poverty by the middle of the eighteenth century, although a few continued in Bethnal Green even into the last century.
Jolyon Tibbitts’ ancestors started as scarlet dyers and became silk weavers at least six generations ago in Spitalfields in the sixteenth century, founding Warner & Sons Ltd, and then moving to Braintree in the nineteenth century, where the mill stands today as a textile archive. By the time Jolyon was born, the family business had been sold into American hands, yet he has spent his life involved with textiles and, contradicting the familiar story of the decline of weaving in this country, I was delighted to learn the surprising news from him that for the first time in centuries our native industry is on the rise again.
“In the nineteen sixties, there was a wholesale movement of textile manufacturing from here to the Far East on the back of cheap labour and government subsidies. All that really survived here were the very high end manufacturers in fashion and furnishings. But in the past few years, we have seen a major change. The Far East has experienced inflation both in wages and materials, and government subsidies have ceased plus freight prices have escalated hugely.
Taking into account the monetary cost of the long lead times in the Far East, this situation has encouraged more foresighted buyers to refocus on British manufacturing. We can be price competitive now and the difference between manufacturing here and in the Far East is less significant. Consequently, the British mills are experiencing a true revival in fortune, not just in this country but in world markets, more and more mills are establishing themselves as brands now and selling direct to the customers.
The Weavers, in collaboration with the Clothworkers and the Dyers Companies, staged a conference in the City of London last autumn entitle ‘A New Dawn,’ at which Sir Paul Smith and Vince Cable were our key speakers among other industry leaders. We support an internship programme whereby we pay two-thirds of the salary for able graduates to work with weaving companies for six months. We are very careful in matching the skills of the graduates to the needs of the companies and most of the students end up being offered full-time employment by the company after these placements, and, in recent years, we have been able to double the number of these placements.
We make awards to individuals who have made significant contributions and this year’s winner of the Silver Medal was Donald John MacKay who has revived the Harris Tweed industry by persuading Nike to use it in their shoes, winning an order for more than a million metres, and the resulting media interest created a flow of orders that put the industry back on the map again.
My father was a livery man and uncle was a livery man, and so was my grandfather and great grandfather. I became a livery man after seven years apprenticeship in 1968 and joined the council in 2005. Once, every livery company had an ‘Upper Bailiff’ but they all changed it to ‘Master’ over time yet, through eight hundred years, we have kept the original name.”
Charter of Henry II to the Weavers of London granting them their Guild and protection from interference in their trade, 1155-8. The charter is attested by Thomas Becket. Appended is a fragment of the Great Seal, with casts of the full seal on either side. “Know that I have conceded to the Weavers of London to hold their guild in London with all the liberties and customs which they had in the time of King Henry my grandfather.”
Early seventeenth century portrait of Elizabeth I in the possession of the Weavers Company.
Weavers’ Silver Loving Cup, 1662
Weavers’ Poore’s Box, 1666
Promise to contribute to the rebuilding of the Weavers’ Hall after the Great Fire
Nicholas Garrett Weavers’ Almshouses, Porters’ Fields, 1729
William Watson Weavers’ Almshouses, Shoreditch, 1824
Weavers’ Almshouse Wanstead, 1859
Samuel Higgins, silk weaver, in his loom shop at Gauber St, Spitalfields, 1899
Typical Weaver’s House, Spitalfields, 1825
Badge of the Upper Bailiff of the Weavers’ Company – “Weave Truth With Trust”
Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Portrait of Jolyon Tibbitts copyright © Jeremy Freedman
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Whistler in Limehouse & Wapping
DMW937351 The Lime-Burner, from “A Series of Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames”, 1859, printed 1871 (etching & drypoint) by Whistler, James Abbott McNeill (1834-1903); 27.9×20.3 cm; Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, MA, USA; Bequest of George H. Webster; American, out of copyright
W.Jones, Limeburner, Wapping High St
American-born artist, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, was only twenty-five when he arrived in London from Paris in the summer of 1859 and, rejecting the opportunity of staying with his half-sister in Sloane St, he took up lodgings in Wapping instead. Influenced by Charles Baudelaire to pursue subjects from modern life and seek beauty among the working people of the teeming city, Whistler lived among the longshoremen, dockers, watermen and lightermen who inhabited the riverside, frequenting the pubs where they ate and drank.
The revelatory etchings that he created at this time, capturing an entire lost world of ramshackle wooden wharfs, jetties, warehouses, docks and yards, are displayed in a new exhibition which opened this week at the Fine Art Society in New Bond St. Rowing back and forth, the young artist spent weeks in August and September of 1859 upon the Thames capturing the minutiae of the riverside scene within expansive compositions, often featuring distinctive portraits of the men who worked there in the foreground.
The print of the Limeburner’s yard above frames a deep perspective looking from Wapping High St to the Thames, through a sequence of sheds and lean-tos with a light-filled yard between. A man in a cap and waistcoat with lapels stands in the pool of sunshine beside a large sieve while another figure sits in shadow beyond, outlined by the light upon the river. Such an intriguing combination of characters within an authentically-rendered dramatic environment evokes the writing of Charles Dickens, Whistler’s contemporary who shared an equal fascination with this riverside world east of the Tower.
Whistler was to make London his home, living for many years beside the Thames in Chelsea, and the river proved to be an enduring source of inspiration throughout a long career of aesthetic experimentation in painting and print-making. Yet these copper-plate etchings executed during his first months in the city remain my favourites among all his works. Each time I have returned to them over the years, they startle me with their clarity of vision, breathtaking quality of line and keen attention to modest detail.
Limehouse and The Grapes – the curved river frontage can be recognised today.
The Pool of London
Eagle Wharf, Wapping
Billingsgate Market
Longshore Men
Thames Police, Wapping
Black Lion Wharf, Wapping
Looking towards Wapping from the Angel Inn, Bermondsey
‘Whistler on the Thames’ is at the Fine Art Society, 148 New Bond St until 9th May
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Dickens in Shadwell & Limehouse
Madge Darby, Historian of Wapping
