Titles

Several possible titles have been suggested:

• 'A Winter Fog' (1876, Society of French Artists). 1
• 'Nocturne "Blue & Silver" Trafalgar Square Chelsea (Snow)' (1892, Whistler). 2
• 'Blue & Silver Chelsea Snow' (1892, D. C. Thomson). 3
• 'Nocturne / Trafalgar Square – Snow' (1892, Goupil). 4
• 'Gris et Or; – nocturne, Trafalgar Square Chelsea' (1892, Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris). 5
• 'Trafalgar Square, Chelsea – snow and twilight' (1893, Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts). 6
• 'Nocturne in Blue' (1901, Glasgow Art Galleries). 7
• 'Trafalgar Square, Chelsea' (1905, ISSPG). 8
• 'Nocturne: Trafalgar Square – Snow' (1980, YMSM). 9

The preferred title, 'Nocturne: Trafalgar Square – Snow', is based on the 1892 title, with punctuation regularised.

Description

Nocturne: Trafalgar Square – Snow, Freer Gallery of Art

A grey city-scape in horizontal format, showing the right hand corner of a square surrounded by three-storey buildings. There are bare branched trees in the square. In the foreground at left is the corner of a fence, with light shining on the snow behind it. There is a street lamp at right, and a glimpse, beyond the far right corner of the square, of buildings and a tower with lit windows. Lights shine faintly from buildings on the far side of the square, to left.

Site

The scene shows not the well-known Trafalgar Square but another Trafalgar Square, which was off the Fulham Road in Chelsea, London. Curry identified it as the north-west corner of the square, looking towards the New Brompton Road. 10

Comments

Musical connections were discussed in, for instance, on the former Freer Gallery of Art website, in Whistler and Music:

'This nocturne, depicting a snow-laden Trafalgar Square in Chelsea, was also in the 1892 exhibition of Whistler's work that Debussy is thought to have seen. Deeply influenced by Whistler's art and thought, Debussy once wrote about his orchestra Nocturnes (1897-99), "It's an experiment, in fact, in finding the different combinations possible inside a single color, as a painter might make a study in gray, for example." The composer's indebtedness to the visual arts is also reflected in the names he gave to many of his other works: images, sketches, estampes (prints), and scenes.' 11