Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Southampton Water
James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903)
1872
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 51 × 76.7 cm (20 1/16 × 30 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- London
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Stickney Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In the early 1870s James McNeill Whistler took a radical step toward abstraction with his Nocturnes series. In keeping with his art-for-art’s-sake creed, these works capture the stillness of evening while evoking a connection to music. Unlike his earlier marine paintings, the subject of this work—an inlet along the English Channel near Southampton—is obscured by the approaching night. Large shipping vessels appear as ghostly shapes, reduced to shadowy forms by the deepening twilight, while the only points of brightness come from the subtle reflections of lights and the fragmented orb of the moon. The setting thus serves primarily as a vehicle for Whistler’s interest in the harmonies of muted color amid darkness.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
