The Thames

Painted in 1875 during Morisot's visit to London with her husband Eugène and now in the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, this canvas of the Thames provides a rare British landscape subject. The Thames at this period was still an active commercial river rather than the touristic spectacle it would later become, and Morisot's view captures its industrial-commercial character with the same fresh observation she brought to the Seine. The Barberini's strong collection of French Impressionism includes this unusual Morisot.

The Thames's wider, greyer quality compared to the Seine is captured through a cooler palette of steely blues and greys, the water surface rendered with horizontal strokes that convey the river's slower, more massive flow. The atmospheric haze typical of London's riverside light gives the distance a soft, receding quality.