The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

Nocturne: Venice dates from 1880. ¹

According to the American artist Otto Henry Bacher (1856-1909), who was with Whistler in Venice in 1880, Whistler painted:

'a scene from a café near the Royal Gardens. Night after night he watched the gondolas pass, singly and in groups, with lanterns waving in the darkness, without making a stroke with brush or pen. Then he would return to his rooms and paint the scene, or as much as he could remember, going again and again to refresh some particular impression. The canvas was a wonderful record. The gondolas could be faintly seen in the darkness, the only light spots being the white-clothed gondoliers and the flickering lights and reflections.' ²

Images

Subject

Titles

Only one title has been suggested:

• 'Nocturne: Venice' (1980, YMSM). ³

Description

It was described by Otto Bacher:

'a scene from a café near the Royal Gardens. ... The gondolas could be faintly seen in the darkness, the only light spots being the white-clothed gondoliers and the flickering lights and reflections.' ⁴

Site

A view of the lagoon from near the Royal Gardens.

Nocturne in Blue and Silver: The Lagoon, Venice, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Nocturne in Blue and Silver: The Lagoon,Venice y212 may well show a similar view, although Bacher does not mention the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, which dominates that scene.

Comments

Whistler had practised memory training, remembering and recreating images, for many years, perhaps learning from Ignace-Henri-Jean-Théodore Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) and his teacher Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897). See Nocturne: Chelsea y235.

Technique

Technique

Otto Bacher described Whistler as studying the scene at night, and painting it back in his rooms:

'Night after night he watched the gondolas pass, singly and in groups, with lanterns waving in the darkness, without making a stroke with brush or pen. Then he would return to his rooms and paint the scene, or as much as he could remember, going again and again to refresh some particular impression. The canvas was a wonderful record.' ⁵

Conservation History

Unknown.

Frame

Unknown.

History

Provenance

Unknown.

Exhibitions

Unknown.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 217) as 'Nocturne: Venice'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

• None.

Journals 1855-1905

• None.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Bacher, Otto Henry, With Whistler in Venice, 1st edition, New York, 1908 (suppressed for publishing facsimiles of Whistler's letters), pp. 55-56.
• MacDonald, Margaret F., Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice, Aldershot and California, 2001, p. 30.

Books, General

• None.

Catalogues 1906-Present

• None.

Journals 1906-Present

• None.

Websites

• None.

Unpublished

• None.

Other

• None.