1878
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Nocturne is a 1878 by James McNeill Whistler, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a dark riverbank at night, with faint lights reflected in the water and a smoky sky. Whistler called these paintings "nocturnes" after musical pieces meant to be felt, not explained. He wanted color and mood to matter more than the actual scene. The title came from his friend, a piano lover who saw the same quiet beauty in both art and music. To see how other artists played with light in the dark, look up *chiaroscuro*.
Whistler was the first to borrow musical terms for the titles of his works of art. In 1872, he defined painting as "the exact correlative of music, as vague, as purely emotional, as released from all functions of representation." Whistler’s use of musical terminology was meant to convey the supremacy of color, line, and form over subject matter in his art. The title Nocturne was suggested by the artist’s patron, Frederick Leyland, an enthusiastic amateur pianist who was especially fond of Chopin, whose nocturnes were regarded as the epitome of Romantic mood music—particularly appropriate for…
Read the full account in the museum source.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American painter in oils and watercolor, and printmaker, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom.
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