Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) · 1866-ca. 1874

Whistler began this painting in Valparaiso, Chile, where he witnessed a Spanish fleet attack the city. Whistler probably started the painting as a daylight scene, transforming it into a night scene when he reworked the canvas in 1874. The high horizon and the powerful diagonal of the wharf create an arrangement of forms that has no European precedent, but recalls the late landscapes of the Japanese painter Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858).