After returning to London from Venice, Whistler made a number of prints which recorded the shop fronts of small vendors operating in old buildings. Here, the windows, awnings, and piled counters of Maunder’s fish shop on Cheyne Walk, near the artist’s home in Chelsea, are used to develop an abstracted pattern of lights and darks. Supported by the architecture, the horizontal arrangement is populated by pedestrians and shop assistants, some standing within shadowed doorways, others on the brightly lit sidewalk.
