Black Lion Warf, James McNeill Whistler, etching, roughly 6 x 9 inches (15 x 22 cm); link is to the impression in the collection the National Gallery of Art, DC. Their site has both a zoomable and high resolution downloadable version of the image, as does Wikimedia Commons.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in person another impression of this etching from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I’ve taken the liberty of adjusting this image a little lighter to be in keeping with the impression I saw.

In my personal pantheon of great masters of etching, Whistler comes in at number two, after Rembrandt and just before Anders Zorn.

Whistler’s etchings of the wharves and warehouses along London’s River Thames just knock me out — so detailed in places, elegantly simplified in others, precise and yet loose and gestural.

The delicacy of line is a characteristic of etching that no other medium can duplicate, and Whistler was a master at it. When looking at the details from the image (like the figures on the balcony in the images above, bottom), keep in mind the size of the original.

The Woman and Tambourine (Liber Studiorum, part I, plate 3), Joseph Mallord William Turner and Charles Turner, etching and mezzotint, roughly 7 x 11″ (21 x 29 cm). In the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

This was one of the prints Turner created for a 70 plate “book of studies”, he published in the early 19th century.

It was the practice of many artists at the time to work with printmaking specialists, for whom they would create drawings or watercolors as guidelines.

In this case, JMW Turner made brown watercolors as a guide for tone, and etched the basic drawing into the plate himself, turning to frequent collaborator Charles Turner (no relation) to create the tones in mezzotint. (There is a nice short description of the mezzotint process here.)