Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea
Original title
James McNeill Whistler
- Institution
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
- Accession
- 17.3.159
- Credit
- Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1917
- Rights
Public domain: the artist died in 1903. The Metropolitan Museum of Art releases this image under CC0 through its Open Access programme.
- Description
- A misty grey-blue view across the Thames at night. The far bank is a low dark band of buildings and chimneys with a few faint lights reflected in the water, and a single barge with a standing figure drifts in the foreground.
- Image
- 1600 × 1068
source file retrieved 2026-10-11 - Catalogue no.
- G-009032
coldlibrary.com/g/009032 - Credit line
- James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea, 1878. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain (CC0). Via Cold Library: https://coldlibrary.com/g/009032
Whistler called his night views of the Thames nocturnes, borrowing the word from music, because he wanted them looked at the way one listens. In this lithotint he brushed tone onto the stone and scraped the lights out, so the whole river is a single soft wash. The factories on the far bank become, for a moment, as calm as a hillside.
