1890
James McNeill Whistler American, 1834-1903
United States
Whistler’s interior subjects are mostly domestic scenes or workshops, but this print depicts a room in Gatti’s Restaurant on the Strand in London, which was near the offices of the artist’s lithographic printers, Thomas and T. R. Way. Convenient also to theaters and the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, Gatti’s served reasonably priced food and drink and was a more casual alternative to restaurants such as the Savoy, the Criterion, or the Café Royal in Piccadilly, where artists and writers including Whistler, Theodore Roussel, Walter Sickert, and Oscar Wilde frequently met and dined.
Transfer lithograph in black on ivory laid paper