An American in London: Whistler's paintings of Thames

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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27402533

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Famed painter James McNeill Whistler may have been born in America but he spent most of his life in Victorian London.

And although his background was international - he was raised in Russia before training as an artist in France - much of his work focused on the local.
Throughout the 1860s and 1870s Whistler was drawn to the bustling and rapidly changing urban neighbourhood surrounding Battersea Bridge - and, of course, to the River Thames that flows beneath it.
Margaret MacDonald, one of the curators of An American in London, an exhibition at the Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, talked to the BBC about this pivotal period in Whistler's career.
Produced by the BBC's Bill McKenna; camera by Felicia Barr