Provenance

• By 1899: Alexander Arnold Hannay (1858-1927) , London.
• 1920: bought from the Howard Young Galleries, New York, by Bernard B. Jones (dates unknown) .
• 1927: possibly with W. B. Paterson, London dealer.
• ca 1940/1950; private collection, USA.
• 1967-1968: Adams, Davidson & Co., Washington, DC;
• By 1980: said to have been acquired by the Elliot L. Jones Trust.
• 1990: bequeathed by Sara Virginia Jones (1920-1990), Tchula, Mississippi, to the Mississippi Museum of Art.

It is not known what happened to this painting at the time of Whistler's bankruptcy in 1879: it may be the 'Symphony in grey and gold' sold by Whistler to Lucas (Luke) Alexander Ionides (1837-1924) in 'the early eighties' and sold by him 'some twenty years later' to a dealer for £150 (see Symphony in Grey and Gold [YMSM 143]) 1 Alternatively it could have been the 'little Nocturne' sold by Whistler to Luke Ionides in 1878 and bought back about 1892 (see Nocturne in Grey and Gold [YMSM 155]).

Labels on the verso give the title 'Nocturne – Gris et Or' and Whistler's Paris address, 110 rue du Bac, suggesting it was in Paris some time between 1892 and 1899. By 1899 it was owned by A. A. Hannay who lent it to an exhibition in Dublin. There are considerable gaps in the provenance thereafter. According to the records of the Howard Young Gallery, New York, it was bought from them by Bernard B. Jones in 1920. 2 A note, made by someone unknown, suggests that it was with W. B. Paterson, a London art dealer, in 1927. Joseph Whistler Revillon (1886-1955), probably writing in the 1940s, recorded it as in a private American collection. 3 It was with Adams, Davidson & Co., Washington, DC, in 1967, and acquired by the Elliot L. Jones Trust. The Adams Davidson Galleries was established in 1965 and closed in 2014; their records are in the Archives of American Art.

Exhibitions

• 1898: Possibly A Collection of Selected Works by Painters of the English, French & Dutch Schools, Goupil Gallery, London, 1898 (cat. no. 25) as 'Nocturne – Blue and Gold'.
• 1899: A Loan Collection of Modern Paintings, Leinster Hall, Dublin, 1899 (cat. no. 80) as 'Nocturne'.
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905. (cat. no. 74) as 'Nocturne, Westminster. Grey and Gold'.

It may have been the painting shown in A Collection of Selected Works by Painters of the English, French & Dutch Schools, Goupil Gallery, London, 1898 (cat. no. 25) as 'Nocturne – Blue and Gold' (but this could have been Nocturne in Blue and Silver [YMSM 151]). The description in the Bristol Times, 5 March 1898, does tally reasonably well with Nocturne: Westminster – Grey and Gold:

'The gold ... is found in the garish lights that are reflected in the waters of a broad river stretching miles to the horizon, of which the distance has been gained by the judicious use of a dark grey set, as it were, diagonally across a slate-blue background. A streak of red suggests the port light of a steamer; the grey is the dividing line between the blue of the river and the blue of the open sky'.