Famed painter James McNeill Whistler was born in America but he spent most of his life in Victorian London.
And although his background was international – he was raised in Russia before training as an artist in France – much of his work focused on the local.
Throughout the 1860s and 1870s Whistler was drawn to the bustling and rapidly changing urban neighbourhood surrounding Battersea Bridge – and, of course, to the River Thames that flows beneath it.
Margaret MacDonald, one of the curators of “An American in London: Whistler and the Thames” at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, talked to the BBC about this pivotal period in Whistler’s career.
Produced by the BBC’s Bill McKenna; camera by Felicia Barr.
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