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James McNeill Whistler Nocturne in
Blue and Silver The series of paintings Whistler called his "nocturnes" (from the famous piano pieces by Chopin) were the result of evening expeditions on the river Thames near his home in Chelsea. He would study what he saw intently but without making sketches, painting the view in his studio the following day: the riverscape half-emerges through veils of darkness, mist, and memory. The industrial waterfront of Battersea was hardly promising material from the aesthetic point of view, but Whistler sought that moment of poetry "When . . . the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy-land is before us." |