Empty barges sit, waiting to be loaded below warehouses which line the upper right. The cranes on the docks mimic the masts of nearby ships. Shipping crates line the docks. The energetic lines of the etching creates a feeling of movement throughout the water and sky of the image. Number five of twelve etchings from The Grey River portfolio. Like Whistler’s Thames set, the etching is taken from a low viewpoint. The warehouses on the right are less detailed and the work stylistically more emphatic and definite than Whistler’s work. On the quay, crates are piled up ready to be loaded on to barges.

Mortimer Menpes was an Australian and British artist whose etchings were influenced by Japanese culture and etching, and the work of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. In 1886 Menpes collaborated with two writers Justin McCarthy and Rosa Praed to produce The Grey River, an illustrated book about the River Thames. The book was published in 1889, and while McCarthy and Praed’s text centred on history, many of Menpes’s illustrations show industrial scenes, such as wharves, dredges, barges and warehouses. A highly prolific artist, Menpes etched more than 500 plates on various subjects.