London in the Pool
Medium
Drawing
Classification
Drawing
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Moune G.H. Webster
Accession Number
1974.85.4
Tags
Art Historical Context
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan's *London in the Pool*, a drawing from the Smithsonian American Museum, transports viewers to the bustling Thames River in London. Captured in an undated work, it features rowboats, steamers, and groups of figures amid the waterway's lively activity. "The Pool of London," as this stretch of the Thames was known, was a vital hub for maritime trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where goods from around the empire flowed into the heart of the British capital. MacLaughlan, a Canadian-American artist renowned for his meticulous etchings and drawings of European ...
About the Artist
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan
Donald Shaw MacLaughlan (1876–1938) was born on November 9 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, though he is recognized as an American artist after his family relocated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1890. There, as a teenager, he immersed himself in the Boston Public Library's collections of old master prints, studying works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and eighteenth-century E...