1877 (ca.), James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Trafalgar Square, Chelsea - Snow -- National Museum of Asian Art (Washington)
From the museum label: Long before Whistler arrived in London, the open fields and market gardens south and west of Chelsea Common had given way to urbanization. This chilly scene was first exhibited in 1876 as A Winter Fog. Built in 1810, only five years after the famed battle it was named after, Trafalgar Square in Chelsea consisted of blocks of apartments laid out around a garden, an attempt at gentrification that stood until about 1930, when a mixture of houses and villas replaced the dwellings Whistler painted. In 1938, the spot was renamed Chelsea Square to avoid confusion with Westminster's more familiar Trafalgar Square, built 1830. Place names, like streetscapes, are subject to urban change.
Link to other paintings from the exhibition Whistler: Streetscapes, Urban Change.
Link to other Whistler paintings.
1877 (ca.), James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Trafalgar Square, Chelsea - Snow -- National Museum of Asian Art (Washington)
From the museum label: Long before Whistler arrived in London, the open fields and market gardens south and west of Chelsea Common had given way to urbanization. This chilly scene was first exhibited in 1876 as A Winter Fog. Built in 1810, only five years after the famed battle it was named after, Trafalgar Square in Chelsea consisted of blocks of apartments laid out around a garden, an attempt at gentrification that stood until about 1930, when a mixture of houses and villas replaced the dwellings Whistler painted. In 1938, the spot was renamed Chelsea Square to avoid confusion with Westminster's more familiar Trafalgar Square, built 1830. Place names, like streetscapes, are subject to urban change.
Link to other paintings from the exhibition Whistler: Streetscapes, Urban Change.
Link to other Whistler paintings.