Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea
The Thames at Chelsea at dusk, pared down to a few bands of blue and grey — the earliest of Whistler's Thames Nocturnes.
Chelsea
The painting shows a real, identified place that you can find today. The exact spot the artist worked from is not necessarily known.
Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea — at a glance
- Artist
- James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903)
- Year
- 1871
- Movement
- Aestheticism / Tonalism
- Place
- The Thames at Chelsea, London
- Viewpoint
- The Chelsea embankment toward Battersea — reach survives; far bank rebuilt
- Medium
- Oil on wood
- Dimensions
- c. 50 × 60 cm
- Now at
- Tate Britain, London
Overview
Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea is usually taken to be the first of the Thames night scenes that James McNeill Whistler called ‘Nocturnes’, painted in 1871. It shows the river at Chelsea at dusk reduced almost to nothing: a low strip of shore with one small figure, a faint industrial far bank, a moored boat, and a wide, still expanse of blue water and sky. It is oil on wood, about 50 by 60 cm, and it hangs in Tate Britain, London.
Where was Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea painted?
Scholarship Whistler lived on Lindsey Row (now part of Cheyne Walk) on the Chelsea waterfront and painted the reach of the Thames in front of it, looking towards the low-lying Battersea shore with its wharves and mills. The embankment and the reach are still there; the far bank has been wholly rebuilt. The picture is a mood of a stretch of river at an hour, not a topographical view.
What is in the painting?
A thin band of foreshore runs across the lower canvas, with a single standing figure and a hint of a jetty. Beyond, the flat river; on the far side, barely visible, the smudged shapes and one or two lights of the Battersea works. The upper two-thirds is an almost empty wash of blue-grey sky. A small boat sits low on the water.
Look closely
The lone figure
One small standing figure on the foreshore — the only vertical accent in the design.
The far bank
The Battersea wharves and mills are a smudge with one or two lights.
The seal-like signature
Whistler's butterfly monogram sits in a drawn cartouche, borrowed from Japanese prints.
The bare sky
The top two-thirds of the panel is an almost empty wash of blue-grey.
Analysis
Composition and design
Three horizontal bands — shore, water, sky — and almost no incident.
Scholarship Whistler reduces the view to stacked horizontals and a single vertical accent (the figure), close to abstraction. The signature is set in a drawn cartouche like a Japanese seal, part of the design.
Colour and light
A narrow range of blue and silver-grey, thinly washed, with a few pale lights.
The paint is brushed on in thin, even veils so the wood grain shows through in places; the tonal span is deliberately tiny, forcing the eye to read subtle shifts of blue and grey.
History & provenance
The painting is in Tate Britain, London, among the group of Whistler Nocturnes.
Sources
- Tate — collection entry for James McNeill Whistler, ‘Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea’ (1871; oil on wood, c. 50 × 60 cm)
Related paintings
More by James McNeill Whistler
Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket
