The Thames from Millbank

Redgrave's Thames from Millbank from around 1836 captures the industrial Thames landscape that was simultaneously a subject of civic pride and social anxiety in Victorian London. Millbank — later the site of the Tate Britain — was in the 1830s a riverside industrial area where the Thames waterfront mixed commercial activity with desolate mud flats. Redgrave's view shows the river before the great Victorian riverside improvements, capturing the unreformed industrial waterscape that contemporary reformers were beginning to address. His choice of this industrial subject reflects the social realism that ran through his career alongside his sentimental genre paintings.

The oil on canvas demonstrates Redgrave's careful handling of riverine atmosphere and reflected light, with a naturalistic palette that captures the silvery quality of Thames-side light.