Nocturne: Cremorne Gardens, No. 3

Whistler was attracted to the nocturnal visual effects of Cremorne Gardens, a popular, if somewhat seedy, amusement park only a few blocks from his residence in the Chelsea section of London. Two figures, reduced to quick strokes of black and white paint, seem to glide away from a pool of light in the right foreground. Their retreat into shadow hints at Cremorne’s reputation as an illicit trysting spot. The implied narrative, however, is literally overshadowed by Whistler’s interest in aesthetic, rather than romantic, relationships. Nearly abstract patterns of lighter pigment, thinned to a runny consistency that Whistler called “sauce,” punctuate the enveloping darkness. The layering of light and dark rectangles is a compositional device that Whistler repeated in some of the works to the right, most notably in the Amsterdam watercolors and in the Venice etching "Nocturne: Furnace."