Battersea Reach

This work shows a view of the Thames at Battersea with the Battersea Railway Bridge in the distance. The plate was etched from Whistler’s home in Chelsea at 7 Lindsay Row in London, where he moved in March 1863. Haden’s technique and style recalls the structure of Whistler’s Thames etchings of a few years earlier.

Haden was one of the first etchers of the time to take his plates outdoors and work directly from nature. He encouraged and influenced his brother-in-law, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, to do the same, so much so that Whistler dedicated his first set of etchings, the ‘French Set,’ to Haden. When Whistler moved to London in 1859 he was a frequent visitor to Haden's household and produced both etchings and paintings of the family members. Several years later, however, serious rifts became apparent between these two great artists. In Paris in 1867 an argument resulted in Whistler pushing Haden through a plate-glass window. Haden and Whistler never spoke to each other again.