Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge

Whistler, the friend of Monet and Renoir, was instrumental in communicating Impressionism to Britain. His nocturnes of the early 1870s were pioneering work contemporaneous with Monet’s breakthrough. In them, Whistler viewed the Thames at night in muted, poetic harmonies of hue. What counted was not a precise detail or outline; rather, Whistler was after large, simple, major form. The foreground, middle distance and background were treated in much the same way, conventional perspective was meaningless. The influence of Japanese art is palpable.