The exhibition presents a selection of prints by painter and print master James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), who was active in England and France in the mid-19th century. Like other artists of the period (e.g. Jean-Franחois Millet and Honorי Daumier), and like the French realists, such as Gustave Courbet, whose art influenced him in his early days, Whistler used the unique qualities of print in order to depict new topics typical of the modern world, with social and political criticism.
The exhibition includes prints of scenes from modern cities, expanding with intensified industrialization and its ensuing economical and social changes, and of the daily lives of the working classes in Paris and London. Alongside nostalgic and poetical depictions of city life, foggy Thames scenes and rustic ruins are presented, from the series "Twelve Etchings from Nature" (the "French Set") and "Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames and Other Subjects" (the "Thames Set").