Sunset on the Thames

William Lionel Wyllie (b. 1851)

early 1880s

Oil on canvas

13 x 7 inches

Courtesy of the Maas Gallery, London

“Born in France and a great sailor, Wyllie often drew, etched and painted the shipping he saw on the Thames, particularly in the first half of the 1880s when he cruised the river in his yacht Ladybird. During these years, his Academy exhibits were exclusively Thames subjects. Like the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens, he particularly enjoyed effects of steam mixed with smoke against the sky and he was fascinated by the commercial bustle of great rivers. He frequently painted Thames lightermen, who, like Venetian gondoliers, could steer their heavily-laden barges with incredible skill, using only long oars and a single tide to navigate the many bends and bridges up and down the river.”

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