Joseph Plaskett’s London Docks distils the industrial Thames into a soft, atmospheric abstraction where form dissolves into light. The skyline is reduced to a dusky band of warehouses, cranes, and pitched-roof buildings, pressed gently against a pale horizon. Rendered in muted violets, greys, and charcoal tones, the distant structures appear almost weightless, as though emerging from mist.

Plaskett devotes much of the composition to the river itself—a broad expanse of luminous, silvery water reflecting the faint sun. Loose, scraped, and lightly scumbled pastel strokes capture the tremor of light on the surface, creating a sense of calm movement that contrasts with the dense silhouettes above. A few moored barges drift quietly along the shoreline, anchoring the scene without disturbing its serenity.

With its atmospheric restraint and poetic economy of detail, London Docks transforms an industrial stretch of the Thames into a meditative study of tone, space, and reflection—one of Plaskett’s most evocative mid-1960s urban impressions.