Whistler

MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR EDITED BY . . T. LEMAN HARE
WHISTLER
1834-1903
In the Same Series
Others in Preparation.
PLATE I.—OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE. Frontispiece
(In the National Gallery)
This nocturne was bought by the National Collections Fund from the Whistler Memorial Exhibition. It was one of the canvases brought forward during the cross-examination of the artist in the Whistler v. Ruskin trial.
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.


At the time when Rossetti and his circle were foregathering chiefly at Rossetti’s house, quiet Chelsea scarcely knew how daily were associations added which will always cluster round her name. Whistler’s share in those associations is very large, and he has left in his paintings the memory of many a night, as he returned beside the river. Before Whistler painted it, night was more opaque than it is now. It had been viewed only through the window of tradition. It was left for a man of the world coming out of an artificial London room to paint its stillness, and also to show us that we ourselves had made night more beautiful, with ghostly silver and gold; and to tell us that the dark bridges that sweep into it do not interrupt—that we cannot interrupt, the music of nature.