Provenance

• 1899: sold by Whistler to John James Cowan (1846-1936) , Edinburgh;
• 1926: sold at auction, Cowan sale, Christie's, London, 2 July 1926 (lot 161), and bought by 'Mason', 540 guineas.
• 1930: sold by Scott & Fowles, New York dealers, to Grenville Lindell Winthrop (1864-1943) , New York, 20 January 1930, for $9000;
• 1943: bequeathed by him to the Fogg Art Museum.

In 1885 or 1886 it was recorded that 'Nocturne – black & gold', either Catalogue no. 49 or 58 in the exhibition of 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884, had been sold to Edward John Poole (b. ca 1848). 1 Cat. no. 58 was 'Nocturne, black and gold – No. 6, Rag Shop, Chelsea'.

J. J. Cowan lent the painting to the ISSPG exhibition in April 1899 (cat. no. 134).

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 58) as 'Nocturne, black and gold – No. 6, Rag Shop, Chelsea'.
• 1899: 2nd Exhibition, Pictures, Drawings, Prints and Sculptures, International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, London, 1899 (cat. no. 134) as 'Nocturne in Brown and Gold – Chelsea Rags'.
• 1905: Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the late James McNeill Whistler, First President of The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1905 (cat. no. 90) as 'Nocturne, Chelsea Rags'.

It received little mention at the time of the Dowdeswell exhibition. The Sunday Times art critic had mixed feelings about Whistler's figure paintings Scherzo in Blue: The Blue Girl [YMSM 226] and Note in Red: The Siesta [YMSM 254], and added a brief reference to the 'Nocturne in black and gold':

'There is poetry really in some of them, as in the "Note in Red," or the "Scherzo in Blue," both of which are striking in colour, although they are marred with great ugliness of form. ... Their costumes seem to have been purchased ... at that Rag shop in Chelsea, a picture of which, taken seemingly in the middle of the night, Mr. Whistler obligingly christens a "Nocturne in black and gold.” ' 2

Whistler played with the possible arrangements of his exhibits for the 1899 show in two extant drawings, Plan of a panel of pictures for the ISSPG [M.1582], where it was labelled as ‘Cowan’s shop Nocturne’, and Paintings at the ISSPG [M.1583].

In May 1899 the Glasgow Herald described it as 'a beautiful sombre night effect, in which looms the interior and window of a shop, exquisite in tone,' and the Pall Mall Gazette, as 'the dim, delicious Nocturne in Brown and Gold – Chelsea Rags'. 3