Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Chelsea

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake." He found a parallel between painting and music, and entitled many of his paintings arrangements, harmonies, and nocturnes, emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony.

This view is from Battersea Bridge looking across the Thames towards Chelsea. The tower of Chelsea Old Church is just visible on the right, and a fisherman stands in the foreground looking out to a low barge. This is the first of Whistler’s series of Nocturnes: paintings intended to convey a sense of the beauty and tranquility of the River Thames in the evening or by night. The influence of Japanese woodblock prints is evident from the relatively small range of colors and the butterfly device at the lower center, which Whistler used as his signature.