Nocturne in Blue and Silver

James McNeill Whistler, 1834–1903

1872 to 1878, butterfly added ca. 1885

Oil on canvas

Yale Center for British Art

A dark, atmospheric nocturne depicts a body of water with faint lights and indistinct structures on the horizon. A small boat with a figure is visible in the foreground. Depicted at nighttime and cloaked in fog and smoke, Whistler’s haunting Thames landscape can be difficult to read. The buildings of Morgan’s Crucible Company at the top left as well as the river barge and its solitary bargeman all fade into the murky gloom. The moodiness of the scene is the result not of the natural atmospherics caused by the river, but rather of the increase of smoke and pollution in the London sky due to unchecked industrialization. The artist adopted the word “nocturne” in the painting’s title from Frédéric Chopin’s musical compositions, implying that viewers are meant to appreciate the work for its formal “harmo