Provenance

• Unknown.

Exhibitions

• 1888: Exposition Brown, Boudin, Caillebotte, Lepine, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Whistler, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1888 (cat. no. 46) as 'Nocturne en bleu et or'.

Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso Bay, Freer Gallery of Art

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – St Mark's, Venice, National Museum of Wales

In addition to the two Nocturnes in Blue and Silver, Durand-Ruel also showed a Nocturne in Blue and Gold, that is, three ‘blue’ Nocturnes in total. Several Nocturnes would have been available for the exhibition, among them Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Valparaiso Bay [YMSM 076] and Nocturne: Blue and Gold - St Mark's, Venice [YMSM 213]. The contemporary reviews are not very specific in their descriptions, which complicates a convincing identification. The writer for the Chronique des arts et de la curiosité pointed out the ‘fluidité’ (meaning both fluidity and fluency) of the nocturnes. 1 Albert Michel described them as ‘barely a scumble of colour and of imperceptible nuances’ (‘à peine un frottis de couleur et des nuances insaisissables’). 2