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A dark figure walks down a snowy street at night.

A dark figure walks along the edge of a snow-covered street at night. The top edge of a wall along the street and a tree are just barely visible on the left-hand side of the scene. The buildings across the center of the frame recede into the darkness. Just ahead of the figure is a large panel of windows, which glow with yellow light from within. Above the black mass of the buildings is a bit of the sky, which is painted a very dark blue.

Gallery Text

Whistler’s most famous nocturnes, or night views, depict the River Thames in London. However, in the 1870s Whistler also painted street scenes of the area near his home and studio in Chelsea, a suburban locale that was quickly being engulfed by the largest city in the world. With thin washes of paint, Whistler built up this mysterious scene depicting a male figure wandering a snowy street. Color was central to Whistler’s paintings, as demonstrated in the title he chose for this work. The blacks and grays of night are contrasted with what Whistler referred to as "gold,” his name for the twinkling, yellowish glow cast by the gaslights that illuminated the streets of Chelsea. It is possible that this painting is now somewhat darker than Whistler intended because he used dark grounds (or preparatory layers) over his canvases. As the paint on top of these grounds becomes more transparent with age, the entire painting darkens.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.172
People
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, American (Lowell, MA 1834 - 1903 London, England)
Title
Nocturne in Grey and Gold: Chelsea Snow
Other Titles
Former Title: Harmony in Grey and Gold
Former Title: Nocturne--Grey and Gold Snow
Former Title: Chelsea Nocturne
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
1876
Places
Creation Place: North America, United States
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/230417

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2700, European and American Art, 19th century, Impressionism and the Late Nineteenth Century
View this object's location on our interactive map

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
47 x 62.2 cm (18 1/2 x 24 1/2 in.)
framed: 72.7 x 88.3 x 6.4 cm (28 5/8 x 34 3/4 x 2 1/2 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Sold by the artist to C.A. Howell, London, February 22, 1878; his sale to Alfred Chapman, Esq., 1878; his sale back to Whistler, after 1894 [through Goupil Galleries?]; his sale to John James Cowan, December 1898; Edwin Amsinck; to his wife, Antoinie Amsinck; her bequest to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1921; its sale to Galerie Paffrath, Dusseldorf, May 17, 1926; Barbizon House, London; Knoedler & Co., New York; Scott and Fowles, New York; their sale to Grenville Lindall Winthrop, March 1933; his bequest to the Fogg Art Museum, 1943.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.172
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • II Summer Exhibition, exh. cat., Grosvenor Gallery (London, England, 1878), no. 57
  • Exhibition of Nocturnes, Marines and Chevalet Pieces: Small Collection Kindly Lent by Their Owners, exh. cat., Goupil Gallery (London, England, 1892), no. 16
  • Thomas R. Way, The Art of James McNeill Whistler: An Appreciation, George Bell and Sons, Ltd. (London, England, 1903), pp. 20, 60-61
  • Theodore Duret, Histoire de J. McN. Whistler et de son Oeuvre., Henri Floury (Paris, France, 1904), repr. opposite p. 82
  • James Abbott McNeill Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York, NY, 1904), pp. 126, 307-308
  • [Unidentified article], Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1905), ser. 3, vol. 34, p. 239., p. 239, reproduced
  • Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, J. B. Lippincott/W. Heinemann (Philadelphia, PA and London, England, 1908), v. I, pp. 166-167
  • Bernhard Sickert, Whistler, Duckworth & Co. (London, England, 1908), pp. 142, 145, 159
  • Michael Bryan, Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, George Bell and Sons, Ltd. (London, England, 1909-1910), v. 5, p. 363
  • Katalog der Neuren Meister, exh. cat., Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg, Germany, 1922), no. 2487, p. 243
  • James Laver, Whistler, Faber & Faber (London) (London, England, 1930), p. 182
  • Art in New England, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA, 1939), p. 91
  • Denys Sutton, James McNeill Whistler: Paintings, Etchings, Pastels and Watercolors, Phaidon Press (London, England, 1966), p. 192, reproduced plate 80
  • Donald Holden, Whistler Landscapes and Seascapes, Watson-Guptill Publications (New York, NY, 1969), p. 46, reproduced p. 47
  • Kenyon Castle Bolton, III, Peter G. Huenink, Earl A. Powell III, Harry Z. Rand, and Nanette C. Sexton, American Art at Harvard, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1972), cat. 93, ill.
  • Stanley Weintraub, Whistler: A Biography, Weybright and Talley (New York, NY, 1974), pp. 140-141
  • Denys Sutton, "The Victorian Scene", Apollo (November 1978), vol. CVII, reproduced in b/w p. 291, text pp. 290-291
  • Andrew McLaren Young and Margaret F. MacDonald, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, Yale University Press (New Haven, 1980), vol. I p. 100, no. 174, reproduced b/w vol. II, pl. 94
  • Pierre Cabanne, Whistler, Crown Publishers Inc. (New York, NY, 1985), p. 257, ill
  • Pierre Cabanne, Whistler, Marshall Cavendish Ltd. (London, England, 1985), p.257, ill.
  • Kristin A. Mortimer and William G. Klingelhofer, Harvard University Art Museums: A Guide to the Collections, Harvard University Art Museums and Abbeville Press (Cambridge and New York, 1986), p. 185, cat. 210, ill.
  • Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler: A Reexamination, ed. Ruth E. Fine, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C., 1987), mentioned p. 22
  • Robin Spencer, ed., Whistler: A Retrospective, Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc. (New York, NY, 1989), reproduced in color pl. 49, p. 162
  • Timothy Anglin Burgard, American Art at Harvard: Cultures and Contexts, brochure, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1994), p. 10, cat. 21
  • Isabelle Enaud Lechien, James Whistler: Le paintre et le polémiste, ACR PocheCouleur (Paris, France, 1995), pp. 84 - 86, reproduced in color, p. 85
  • Christopher Newall, The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions: Change and Continuity in the Victorian Art World, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1995), p. 135
  • Stephan Wolohojian, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New York, 2003), pp. 471-72, cat. 215, ill.
  • Linda Merrill, After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, exh. cat., SDZ (Belgium, 2003), page 66, repr. in color
  • Stephan Wolohojian, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, France, 2003), pp. 487-88, cat. 215, ill.
  • Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Virginia Anderson, and Kimberly Orcutt, ed., American Paintings at Harvard, Volume Two, Paintings, Drawings, Pastels and Stained Glass by Artists Born 1826-1856, Harvard Art Museums and Yale University Press (U.S.) (Cambridge, MA and New Haven, CT, 2008), p. 412-13, cat. no. 441, reproduced in color, p. 413
  • William Chapman Sharpe, New York Nocturne: The City After Dark in Literature, Painting, and Photography, 1850-1950, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ, 2008), pp. 95-96, fig. 2.7
  • Stacey B. Epstein, Alfred Maurer: At the Vanguard of Modernism, exh. cat., Yale University Press (U.S.), Addison Gallery of American Art, and Phillips Academy (New Haven, 2015), pp. 49 + 54, repr. p. 54
  • David Park Curry, Whistler: Streetscapes, Urban Change, exh. cat., Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, ME, 2023), pp. 74, 76, 77, fig. 54

Exhibition History

  • Summer Exhibition, Grosvenor Gallery, London, 05/01/1878 - 08/05/1878
  • Internationale Kunst-Austellung, Unknown venue, Munich, Munich, 07/01/1888 - 12/31/1888
  • Nocturnes, Marines and Chevalet Pieces, Goupil Gallery, London, 01/01/1892 - 12/31/1892
  • 8th Exhibition, Société des Artistes Indépendants, Société des Artistes Indépendants, Paris, 03/19/1892 - 04/27/1892
  • Unidentified Exhibition, Edinburgh, 1901, [Unknown venue, Edinburgh], Edinburgh, 01/01/1901 - 12/31/1901
  • Unidentified Exhibition, London Academy of Art, 1930, London Academy of Art, London, 01/01/1930 - 12/31/1930
  • American Art at Harvard, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/19/1972 - 06/18/1972
  • American Art at Harvard: Cultures and Contexts, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 10/01/1994 - 12/30/1994
  • The Persistence of Memory: Continuity and Change in American Cultures, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 07/29/1995 - 05/13/2001
  • A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, 03/15/2003 - 05/26/2003; National Gallery, London, 06/25/2003 - 09/14/2003; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10/23/2003 - 01/25/2004
  • For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/16/2004
  • 32Q: 2700 Impressionism, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 10/13/2016 - 01/01/2050

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project
  • Collection Highlights

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu