Etchings, engravings, and other graphic works by James Abbot McNeill Whistler (1834

His views of the Thames, his views of Venice place before our eyes, as it were, a section of the world. We can say, after having looked at them, that we know them better than we would have by contemplating the places directly. The Thames series give an intense sensation of the English environment, of the English atmosphere, of the London of a certain epoch. It is maritime England that they present, with its own character, different from what one could ever see anywhere else. With the Venice views we enter into that Italy which has borrowed from the East, illumined by the sun of the Adriatic. We find ourselves in the presence of a fallen greatness, but always penetrated by nobihty and the patrician elegance of its period of domination. — Theodore Duret (p. 10)