Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Southampton Water  1872

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 the artistry of music. Unlike his earlier marine paintings, the subject of this work—an inlet along the English Channel near Southampton—is obscured by the approa...